


Strong Black Vine

by shaenie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Atypical kink mapping, BDSM, Canon-Typical Violence, First Time, Kink, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:31:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 201,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are both pretty drunk when it finally happens. Not drunk enough to pretend they don't remember or even drunk enough to chalk it up to bad decision making. Just pure liquid courage drunk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to theatregirl7299 for the beta and reassuring me this isn't a hot mess. This is not my fandom, and I've taken a few liberties. Takes place mid season 2 and is stunningly AU from there.

They are both pretty drunk when it finally happens. Not drunk enough to pretend they don't remember or even drunk enough to chalk it up to bad decision making. Just pure liquid courage drunk.

It's been building for a while, and they both know it, and they don't talk about it. This is the one discussion Sam is one hundred percent okay with not having. He doesn't even know what he'd say. He doesn't have a pros and cons list about this.

All the pros are obvious, and the only con he can put his finger on is the need for absolute secrecy.

And really, in their family, what's one more secret?

He doesn't know if Dean has a pros and cons list -- he sincerely doubts it, but that's more because he's Dean than anything else -- and he doesn't know what Dean thinks about it.

He doesn't _want_ to know. It may be the only thing he has ever not wanted to know.

Sam is bowed down with grief and guilt and fear, he is hollowed and harrowed by those things, and he doesn't want them anywhere near this. It's better not to know, and he recognizes that the first time Dean slings his arm across the back of the seat while they're driving down some prairie highway in Oklahoma, and his fingers touch the back of Sam's neck, and neither of them move away.

He knows it the dozens of times it happens afterward, different things, different times; Sam has not allowed himself to make a list.

He is being gentled like a dog, Dean is acclimating him, and Sam does nothing at all but allow it to happen while carefully not thinking about his own reasoning, or about Dean's.

He doesn't need to think about where it's leading. He just knows. So does Dean. 

They're in Kentucky, which is hysterical, in a motel with birds on the sign. They've got a case full of empties on the floor, and they're playing poker without any of the usual trash-talk, so there isn't even a sudden loaded silence when Dean tosses a condom packet into the pot. The silence has been loaded for ages.

Sam dips into his back pocket without hesitation and ups the ante with a slim tube of lubricant.

Dean looks Sam right in the face and silently folds. 

Sam takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Then he plucks the condom and the lube out of the pot and relocates them to the bedside table. Dean sweeps the rest of the pot -- some crumpled ones, a guitar pick, a handful of bite sized Snickers bars, and a tequila flavored sucker with a worm in it -- off the ugly motel bedspread and onto the floor.

They both stand up, and Sam jerks the bedspread down and all the way off the bed, leaving nothing but the bottom sheet and two pillows. He yanks his t-shirt off over his head, and when he looks at Dean again, he's shirtless, too. He's looking at Sam, his eyes measuring the width of his shoulders, the length of his torso. He isn't checking Sam out, exactly. They know what one another look like. It's something else. Sam doesn't know what, and he doesn't try to figure it out. He just stands there and lets Dean look at him.

Dean either finds what he's looking for or decides to quit looking. Either way, he shucks out of his jeans with casual efficiency, and kicks them out of the way. He's bare underneath, which isn't exactly a surprise. Dean considers underwear to be pajamas, and even then only wears them if they have to share close quarters to sleep. Sam will probably never see Dean and a pair of underwear cohabitate again, after this.

Dean is already hard, and something relaxes between Sam's shoulder blades. Sam has seen it before, has even seen it hard before. He has, in fact, seen it in action on several occasions, though none of them had involved Sam except as an innocent bystander. But it's different, seeing Dean stand there in the light, hard for Sam, and apparently at ease with that.

Sam shucks his own jeans. He's been hard since Dean flipped the condom into the pot, and he's likely not as unselfconscious as Dean, but it is far easier than it probably should be. Even when Dean tips his gaze toward Sam's cock appraisingly. Sam knows how big he is. He's had partners of both sexes rabbit on him before. But he isn't worried. Dean and cowardice don't even live in the same hemisphere. Never in a million years would Dean back out on Sam.

When Dean looks back up at Sam's face, there isn't a trace of fear there, not even just nerves. There is no unholy glee, either, the look Sam privately calls Dean's 'let's get stupid' expression. Dean looks like he does when they're at the stage of a hunt that calls for his special skill set. He looks confident, competent, and calm. The way Dean looks when he's doing what he is meant for, and knows it. It's Dean's best expression, the one Sam trusts and loves the most.

Sam doesn't really want to say anything. The silence feels like a spell at this point, one that he doesn't want broken. But there is one thing he absolutely must know.

"Have you?" he asks. "Ever?"

"No, Sammy, I ain't ever," Dean says, sounding remarkably sanguine about it.

He walks over to the bed and sprawls out right in the middle on his back, arms out, legs apart, an eloquent invitation. 

Sam does not require it to be engraved.

By the time he's settled between Dean's knees, Dean is already holding out the lube.

Sam takes it, meeting Dean's gaze. Still nothing but certainty. Fearless.

If it were anyone else, Sam might stop to smell the roses. Dean is well-worth stopping for, but Sam isn't tempted. Dean is an instant gratification kind of guy. He's also a rip-the-bandaid-off-all-at-once kind of guy. Sam is sure that both apply in this situation.

Sam slicks his fingers up, and Dean draws his knees back and plants his feet on the bed. Sam thinks about it for a second, then snags the extra pillow with his unlubed hand. He nudges Dean's hip with it, and Dean lifts up and lets Sam position it under him.

When Sam touches him, just skimming the pad of one finger over his hole, Dean doesn't even take a breath. No inhale, no exhale, no sigh, no sign of any kind of tension at all. Sam looks up, and Dean is watching Sam, just his head cocked up, his arms still loose and easy against the bed. Sam angles himself up on his knees higher so Dean can see him without having to crane his neck like that. Dean smiles faintly, and puts his head back against the pillow. His whole body is a splay of relaxation. Sam knows what Dean looks like tense, and it's nothing like this.

He doesn't think about it. He figures Dean will tell him, if he needs to know. Instead of thinking, he presses carefully forward, and Dean's body opens for him. It isn't entirely without resistance, but it's the autonomic resistance of muscle that isn't often used in this way. Dean's brows arch a little, like he's slightly surprised, but he doesn't say anything. Sam works one finger into Dean until his body accepts it, and until Sam can accustom himself to how Dean feels inside, smooth and tight and so-warm. Then he twists his wrist and purposefully and methodically locates Dean's prostate. This time Dean's eyebrows fly upward, and though his body still doesn't twitch or tense, he clenches a little around Sam's finger.

Sam is the one who inhales raggedly, and he shifts so he can splay one hand across Dean's belly. It's almost automatic, really. He's opened guys up before, he knows to calm and soothe through it. Dean doesn't actually look like he needs calming and soothing, though. His eyebrows settle back where they belong, and he licks at his lower lip, but he isn't even breathing hard. It's Sam who needs steadying, and his hand on Dean's belly works well enough.

He looks down to line up another finger, and looks up again before he presses it in. This time Dean looks uncomfortable, faintly strained around the eyes and mouth, brows slightly furrowed. He feels like a furnace inside, and his body briefly locks tight around Sam's fingers, loosens, locks tight again. Sam feels it happen in the muscles of Dean's belly beneath his hand. He loosens, and before he can tighten down again, Sam bumps against his prostate. Dean starts a little, a whole body motion, and then goes loose and languid around and under Sam's hands. His mouth falls a little open, and he doesn't close it again.

Sam works both fingers into Dean until the idea of pushing his cock into Dean's body feels less like it might end in cardiac arrest. It doesn't do any good, so he concentrates on working Dean open so he doesn't rip Dean up, which is excellent motivation. He adds more lube, shifting his fingers as wide as he can, and Dean actually makes a sound when Sam adds a third finger. It's a little huff of surprise. The strain around his eyes and mouth is back, but his body is still sweetly complacent, and he doesn't lock down again. His eyes are a little wide, but his cock is still fully hard, which can only be a good sign. Even with three fingers, it takes Sam a while to work Dean open enough that he's pretty sure it won't hurt him much.

It is going to hurt. There's nothing Sam can do about his size, nothing he can do about Dean's lack of experience. He wants to warn Dean, but Dean's expression is carefully still, his eyes wise and clear, and he doesn't have to. Dean knows, and Dean only shows fear when it's Sam who's in danger or hurt. Otherwise, his lack of fear and general sense of self-preservation are almost super-human.

This is often a source of frustration for Sam, and a healthy dose of his own fear on Dean's behalf, but this time it's soothing.

It's going to be, at the very least, very very uncomfortable, and Dean knows it, and is still lying there, legs splayed in invitation, cock leaking onto his belly. Sam shifts forward between Dean's knees. He'd like to say he has some sort of distance or perspective, but the truth is, he feels like his cerebral cortex is stripped down to the most basic of things, a jagged electrical pulse of want that arcs down his spine and spreads tendrils of fire through his lower back and belly and cock.

He would be happy to ride Dean, would love to open himself up and push himself down onto Dean's cock, which is respectably sized in its own right; it would stretch and burn so good inside Sam, but Dean has made the choice for both of them, and that's okay, too. More than okay. It's less that Sam has to think about, avoid thinking about.

He lubes up and lines up and presses careful and slow, and Dean does no more than inhale sharply as the head of Sam's cock breaches his body. _Relax_ he would say if it were anyone else, but Dean is already relaxed in all the ways that matter. He is tight, so tight around the head of Sam's cock, and Sam's brain is crackling with the pleasure of it, but he's not clenching or straining against it. _Push, bear down_ , Sam would say, but something prevents it. Some feeling Sam doesn't look closely at.

He pushes instead, slow, the feel of Dean's body giving way before him is like a flush of alcohol hitting his bloodstream, burning in his belly and brain. It's not so much that he's careless, but, God, it's good. Dean is perfect, smooth and hot and so fucking tight. Sam runs a hand up the back of Dean's thigh and pushes it up a little, and Dean hooks it over Sam's thigh without hesitation, does the same with the other one without prompting. Sam slides his hands under Dean's ass and lifts him just a little for a better angle, and Dean is unexpectedly not that heavy, and Sam watches as he slides in, his cock making room for itself inch by inch.

"Hurts."

It's the first thing Dean's said since they started, and Sam goes still. Dean's voice is quiet and a little rough, but it doesn't sound like a protest. Dean's face is still, though Sam can see the faint tension of pain around his eyes and his mouth, the clenching muscle in his jaw, familiar after years of seeing it. Sam's a little astonished that Dean is letting him see it. Pain, like fear, is something that Dean is accomplished at concealing when he wants to.

Sam's hand goes to Dean's cock, no real thought involved, to provide Dean with something to offset the pain, to stroke him hard again -- Sam has never slept with a guy that has stayed hard while Sam worked his way inside, has always had to stroke his partners back to arousal after -- but Dean is still hard. As soon as Sam wraps a hand around him, in fact, Dean goes a little taut, and his cock leaks so much precome down the back of Sam's hand that he thinks for a second that Dean is coming. It's not that, though. There is a tiny lake in Dean's navel, and Sam can feel it dripping off the side of his palm like water droplets from a leaking faucet, and the idea that Dean gets hot like that, is the kind of guy that gets so _wet_ , rockets through his brain like the sharp crack of a pistol firing, and he has to force his hips to stay still, to not respond to that with the ferocious desire to bury himself deeply enough that Dean yells out, makes a noise.

_It will pass,_ Sam would say to anyone else. _Your body has to adjust,_ but Dean's face is still almost serene. The strain is still there, but. "Yes," is what Sam says instead, and Dean's eyes widen faintly, as though Sam has surprised him. Sam lets go of Dean's cock and grips his hips instead, lifting and shifting, and presses in another sweet inch, watching Dean's face.

It's good, too, a good thing, because he gets to see Dean's calm patience crack away like a mask. Dean flushes from hairline to chest, his mouth falling open, and his pupils blow, just like that, like a fast-motion film capture. He sees sweat spring out on Dean's throat and his upper lip and his hands turn downward on the sheet, clenching into fists. Dean's cock jerks, still hard, and moisture doesn't just bead from the slit, it actually streams a little, and Sam feels, weirdly distantly, like he's on fire, or like he should be.

He tightens his grip on Dean's hips enough that there will probably be fingerprint bruises on Dean's skin tomorrow, and does not just push this time, but pulls as well, dragging Dean slowly onto him as the pillow beneath him rucks up under Dean's lower back. Sam holds him up, and Dean pushes his head back into the pillow hard, so Sam can only see the point of his chin for a few seconds, the long, bared line of his throat. His hips shift in Sam's grip, not a struggle, something like an aborted little writhe, and Sam flushes hot as well, his skin one big canvas abruptly speckled with heat and then cooling prickles of sweat.

"Hurts," Dean says again, voice like gravel, and the little pool of precome overflows its banks and trickles across Dean's side, slipping down the faint curve of Dean's waist. "Sammy." It's breathless and thick, but it is so obviously not an objection that Sam doesn't even think of stopping. He pushes and pulls Dean closer, raises up to his knees a little more to adjust to the angle the pillow is bending Dean's body upward at, and Dean breathes harshly through his open mouth, his cock dark red and jumping a little where it lies across his belly.

Dean says it twice more while Sam painstakingly works his way in, without censure or objection, without anything in the inflection that Sam reads as a request to stop, and there is a tickle somewhere in the back of his brain that whispers that Dean is just reinforcing the idea. Beneath that tickle is a chasm of logic and causality that Sam might explore later, or he might not. He isn't sure he wants to know what's down there.

What he does want is to be buried inside Dean, he wants it so bad that he is shaking, and eventually he has to shift forward and plant his hands on either side of Dean's chest to press the last couple of inches inside. He sees sweat drip from his face and shatter against Dean's chest. It feels like it's taken forever to get this far, and he senses that he won't make it much further, Dean is too hot and too tight and too _Dean_ , with his face drawn into lines that could be pain or pleasure or both, his eyes wide and unfocused and distant, his body straining and tight, no careless sprawl of limbs anymore, but shivering hot skin and bunched muscle and white-knuckled fists in the sheets.

With anyone else, Sam would add more lube. He says, "Look at _me_ , Dean," and Dean does it, looking wrecked and helpless with what Sam is sure is not fully pleasure, Dean's hard cock notwithstanding. Sam closes the remaining distance in one rough jerk of motion, and Dean's breath dies in his throat, and for a moment they are both silent and still, until Sam pulls back a little, an inch, a friction-laced burn across the thin-skin of his cock, and then back in firmly, not rough or hard, really, but undeniable.

Dean's body jerks beneath him, and his breath gasps out of him jaggedly. Sam reaches between them for Dean's cock, and his fingertips skid in the wet slick mess on Dean's belly. Sam barely touches Dean's cock -- literally, he has nothing but his fingertips against the hot silk of skin -- and Dean's back arches so hard that Sam has to jerk his hips up to compensate, and Dean comes in silence, holding his breath, face red and clenched, eyes wide open.

Sam comes, too, as much from Dean's face as from the hot, tight clench of Dean's body, without having managed even one actual thrust, hips twisting a little at the barbed-wire rush of pleasure and confusion and a faint but undeniable sense of dread, because he knows there is something wrong here. He bends and rests his forehead against Dean's chest, all curled double, and he knows.

Not the incest -- Sam doesn't give a fuck about the fucking incest, he doesn't give a fuck about social taboos or bullshit illegality -- but something. He doesn't want to know, though, doesn't want to think, and Dean drops a hand into his hair like he knows it, pushes sweaty locks away from Sam's forehead with gentle fingertips that Sam remembers from childhood and from a few times since, always when Sam has been in some way injured.

"Sammy," he says, and Sam is only barely softened. It's happened before, rarely, but he is hard enough to go again, and he wants it. He props himself up on his hands again, and looks at Dean. Dean is still flushed, but his eyes are bright with something, he looks weirdly inquisitive, and Sam couldn't be more surprised if Dean had professed his undying love for Neko Case.

"When I want to discuss this, I'll let you know," Sam says steadily, and Dean looks just as surprised as Sam feels.

There is a long moment in which they look at one another like they are strangers, and Sam's chest tightens painfully.

Sam draws out slowly, about halfway, and Dean tenses, but doesn't make a sound. Aside from his breathing and speaking, Dean hasn't made a sound yet, not pleasure, not pain. He hasn't moved either, not really. Not toward Sam, not away, just a few faint twitches and the tight, hard curve of his body when he came.

Sam presses back in all at once, a little easier with Dean slick with Sam's come, but not much. Dean is still so tight, the burn of him so good around Sam's cock, which is a little sore, too. Dean must be raw, he has to be sore, but he merely breathes out hard, once, and his head falls back onto the pillow. Already, he looks like he had, openly wrecked, helpless and flushed, and if it were anyone else, Sam would say, _It's okay,_ or _It'll be easier this time,_ , or, _Can I?_. 

But it's not anyone else, it's Dean. And if it's not what Sam thought, if it's something he doesn't understand, it doesn't matter. He will take it.

It is faster, this time, harder, and Dean's breathing is by turns, harsh and heavy, and then tight and thin, and he tells Sam it hurts, twice, says Sam's name once, and when Sam is close he slides his hand between them, and Dean's belly and even the shaft of his cock are so wet it slicks Sam's entire palm, and Dean comes immediately, again, and Sam follows immediately, again.

***

Dean falls asleep in under a minute, the kind of sleep in which he is utterly dead to the world. Sam cleans Dean up with a warm, wet washcloth, and Dean doesn't even move. Dean's hole is dark red and swollen, but there is no blood, so Sam is satisfied with that.

The condom is still sitting on the bedside table, and Sam looks at it for a long moment. In spite of it being what had essentially been an invitation, Sam had never even considered it. He wonders briefly if Dean had, and then decides that if Dean hadn't mentioned it, it probably hadn't been important to him.

He cleans himself up, brushes his teeth, and looks in the mirror carefully for a few seconds, but he looks the same. Then he takes a piss and goes to sleep in his own bed, and he thinks he will be up a while, circling this in his mind, dissecting it whether he wants to or not, because that is just the way his brain works, but the next thing he knows, it's morning.


	2. 2

Sam's first thought, his very first cognizant desire, is to cross the distance between their motel room beds, roll Dean over, and do it again. He immediately recognizes it as a bad idea. For one, Dean is likely to be so sore this morning that it isn't even funny, and two, Dean might accidentally stab him if Sam accosts him before he's awake.

Then it becomes moot, as Dean walks into his line of sight already fully dressed, one of Sam's books in his hands. He's moving a little gingerly, which is enough to make Sam feel hot with some kind of possessive satisfaction, but when Sam meets his eyes, Dean looks back easily, with no apparent awkwardness. The only weird thing is the way he walks casually over and sits on the side of Sam's bed while Sam is still in it, wearing nothing but a sheet, and that mostly wound around his hips and thighs.

"Hey, look at this, Sammy," he says, and Sam leans up on one elbow, and they are talking about a possible case just two towns over, casually in one another’s space as usual while Dean holds the place in the book with one finger and Sam flips a few pages ahead to point out another possibility for the potential evil culprit.

They agree that it should be checked out, Sam walks casually naked into the bathroom to take a shower and only thinks about it after he's washed his hair, and then decides that it's a little odd that he didn't feel weird about it, but not that odd. They live in close quarters. They don't lay around and watch TV naked or anything, but he has seen Dean and Dean has seen him, what has to amount to literally a thousand times, so. He wanders out of the bathroom toweling his hair dry to test it again, and Dean doesn't even look up from Sam's laptop, where he's playing Bejeweled.

Sam shrugs mentally and gets dressed. Maybe that's perfectly normal if you're sleeping with your brother. How the hell should he know?

They decide to keep the motel room. It's only two towns over, and all their crap is already everywhere. They eat breakfast at a diner in town, talk about monsters, and Dean makes fun of his breakfast. Sam ignores it, is firmly rebuffed when he says he wants to drive, and they get to work. The division of labor goes as it usually does, they turn out both to be wrong about their predictions of the evil culprit, and it's nearly dawn by the time they get back to the motel. Dean strips down and crashes immediately, and Sam falls asleep half sitting up in all his clothes, having been sure he was not going to get out of brooding this time. He wakes up on his side, curled on top of the blankets on the top half of the bed.

Dean is still out like a light in his bed, and Sam cleans the spiritual gunk off their machetes and the big Bowie that Dean usually keeps under his pillow, but had been too gunky last night.

Dean wakes up and tells Sam to quit fondling his hardware, and Sam makes fun of the pillowcase creases across Dean's face, and by the time he realizes that he could have made some kind of euphemism joke about the fondling of hardware, the opportunity to have done so is past. After a few seconds, Sam is glad.

This is normal. The only thing different is that Sam feels a little less like he wants to break something, and Dean actually smiled yesterday, for real. Not for show. 

***

They spend the next day driving in shifts, headed toward Montana and what looks like it might be a fairly serious haunting. They stop to eat around three in the afternoon, and Dean and Sam both have pancakes. Dean flirts with the waitress, and Sam rolls his eyes, but the only jealousy is the usual kind, the faint envy at Dean's way with women, the faint displeasure at Dean's attention elsewhere. Sam is relieved to know this, but is somehow not very surprised by it.

When they get back to the Impala, it's Dean's turn to sleep. Sam slides the cassette-tape-to-CD adapter into the deck and puts on The Killers. After half an hour or so of Dean shifting restlessly in the passenger seat, Dean asks -- actually _asks_ , does not bark out irritable demands -- if they can turn it off.

"You can sleep with Megadeth blaring, but not with The Killers with the volume at 2?" Sam asks -- actually _asks_ , does not bitch pissily.

Dean says nothing for a moment, and Sam turns to look at him across the expanse of the front seat. Dean is looking back, contemplative. "I know Megadeth. I mean, I've listened to it so much that it don't even register when I'm sleeping. It's just what the world is supposed to sound like. I don't know your music, and it sort of jerks me out of my head when I'm trying to sleep. And." He pauses again, and his brows scrunch together a little. "The stuff you listen to ain't all bad--" It looks like it pains Dean to admit it. "--but a lot of it has a kind of... discordant... under-rhythm? Like it's actually two or three songs, with different beats and melodies, played one on top of the other. I get that's why you like it, you're a complicated guy and all, but it's got too much going on. It makes my brain work to try and untangle it, so I can't sleep."

It may be the longest actual explanation for something non-hunt related that Dean has ever willingly given him. That Dean would think about it at all enough to give such a cogent explanation is something like a flat miracle. And it hadn't even looked hard for him. The whole thing had been astonishingly casual.

"Okay," Sam says, and turns it off. He digs around for the least offensive of Dean's tapes, pops it in, and turns it up.

Dean doesn't say thanks, doesn't even look at Sam, but when Sam looks over four miles later, Dean is sound asleep with Sam's coat wadded up in the niche between the seat and the window as a pillow.

***

The job in Montana is not just a serious haunting. It is more like metaphysical unholy item that affects the newly dead, and it takes them four days to find the source and destroy it, and then several more after that to lay to rest all the spirits -- most of which aren't violent, just annoying -- that the thing roused. It's not quite like anything they've ever come across, and neither of them fully understands how it had worked, which makes them both snappish and annoyed.

Sam writes up every detail he can come up with in Dad's journal, even things that probably don't matter, because he knows so little that he can't actually be sure that those details don't matter. Then he scans those pages at the local Kinko's and emails them to Bobby. He may or may not be able to shed some light on it, but even if not, Bobby is their repository. He's like the supernatural Library of Congress. If they don't know, they ask Bobby. If they know something Bobby might not, they send it to Bobby, so next time he might know.

They eat convenience store junk food because it's easier and they're tired, and go back to the motel room with about half their weapons loaded into an oiled leather bag, because the whole job was so long and messy they'd ended up using a little bit of everything to deal with it, so they've got to be cleaned.

They would both clearly rather be in bed, and Sam's brain feels like a thundercloud of tired discontent, but they spread them all out on the small table and work their way through them one by one. Dean's face is set into a little sneering smile, the approximate equivalent to the way that Sam's brain feels, and Sam expects a fight.

That's the way these things go.

When Dean looks up and says, "Hey, no, you've got that--" and takes the gun Sam is cleaning right out of Sam's hands to fiddle with something that he has apparently done wrong, Sam is sure of it.

Instead, Dean fixes whatever it is that was bugging him, but rather than handing it back to Sam, he sets it on the table. "Let the rest of it wait," he says, meeting Sam's eyes.

Sam is startled by the way he immediately translates that to: Let's go to bed.

"Yeah, okay," Sam says. It's been more than ten days, and while Sam had wanted it, and had maybe expected it, has even jerked off to it a couple of times, he honestly hasn't been thinking about it overmuch. Some of that is deliberate, but mostly it just is.

Which is why it's a surprise to discover that he gets hard so fast it's actually a little painful, and the way it had felt to be inside Dean is crystal clear in his mind, is so powerful and so necessary and so immediate that his whole body is taut with anticipation, and the thundercloud in his brain has been summarily banished.

They shed clothes quickly, again, and leave the lights on, again, and the differences are minor things, really, but Sam notes them anyway. Dean's body is not quite so deliberately relaxed, his face is not so carefully neutral. He is already a little expectant looking, as though he's allowed to be, now that he knows exactly how it works. It's a good thing, Sam is pretty sure, though he can also tell that Dean is holding something back, some part of his want, this time. He hadn't noticed the first time, but Sam can see it in retrospect.

He dismisses it. He wants to know. Sam always wants to know, he wants to know everything about everyone all the time. But this whole thing, it can't be about any kind of coercion. He is not entirely clear on what's going on between them, but he is clear on that.

Dean hands him the lube, and Sam takes it. Dean positions the pillow himself this time, and Sam lets himself look at how pretty Dean is for a moment, lets the idea of Dean spread out and waiting for him tangle in his belly, and then slides between Dean's thighs easily. He fits there. Dean makes a space for him.

The prep goes a little quicker, now that Dean knows what to expect. He's just as tight, it's been so long, but Sam doesn't feel the need to ease him through it quite as slowly, and Dean doesn't make any attempt to slow it down. Dean just breathes hard through the whole thing, and Sam watches Dean's cock as much as his face this time, so he gets to see the way Dean gets wetter and wetter, how he doesn't just drip precome the way that Sam does, a gradual accumulation, but rather jerks it out in little clear spurts, like he's coming in tiny increments the whole time. It's so hot that Sam is flushed and impatient before he is even finished stretching Dean. When Sam adds a third finger, Dean actually pushes up a little into it, urging for the first time, and Sam groans.

When he looks up, Dean is watching Sam's face, just looking, and Sam stretches his fingers as wide as he can inside Dean to watch Dean hitch a breath in, watch his eyes widen.

Sam doesn't ask if he's ready, this is Dean, he just lubes himself up and pushes, breaches.

"Hurts, Sam," Dean says immediately, roughly, and Sam isn't sure what happens. Something. Some quiet lightning flare in the back of his brain, arc of distorted understanding, and he pulls out, and then right back in, breaches Dean again past that first tight barrier of muscle, the hard part, the wider head of his cock pushing its way past, and Dean's head tips back, and Sam gets to watch the flush heat Dean's body, he knows what to look for, the way Dean's nipples tighten and the muscles in his belly flex and his fists clench in the sheets and there are still no pleasure sounds, no pain sounds, but Dean's breath is so harsh it sounds like something tearing.

Sam still has to go slow, Dean is just too tight and Sam is just too big. He won't risk actually physically injuring Dean. But it's not as slow, doesn't have to be, and Sam doesn't mind it that much. He aches to be held, hot and hard, within Dean's body, but this is also good, and he gets to watch Dean heat up by degrees, the strain on his face, the sweat, the way his forearms twist as he clenches his hands, all of it so good, and once Sam is seated deep and tight, all so worth it.

"Sam," Dean croaks. "Hurts."

Sam presses a hand to the middle of Dean's chest. "I know," he says, and Dean comes, hands free. Just breathing, no noises, but his body bows up like before, straining, and he twists a little this time, hips twitching, mouth wide open, whole body hard lines of tense muscle and bone.

Sam doesn't come, just barely. He rides it out, and it's good enough, it's fucking amazing, but he holds back, and when Dean crashes back to the bed, almost limp, Sam slides his hand up to Dean's shoulder to hold him in place, pulls back, and strokes into Dean a little roughly. It is so good that Sam almost literally sees stars, and Dean's whole body goes tight again, and Sam moans and does it again, again, again, and it's still over almost embarrassingly quickly, and Sam doesn't even care. He yells when he comes, and is aware of Dean's hands on his arms, holding him up, steadying him, though the position Dean's in must make that a bitch.

When he halfway recovers his mental capacity, Dean lets him go and falls back onto the bed. His face is strained again, needful, his cock most of the way hard. Sam shifts, and Dean's face twists a little, gone so quickly Sam doesn't catch whatever it is, but he's really thinking of his own cock anyway, he can see what Dean wants, Sam is trying to figure out if he can do it.

He can, he thinks. Not as readily as last time, but he can, but when he rocks his hips forward, Dean touches his arm.

Sam is surprised, but he pulls back and out and away. He looks at the streaks of come across Dean's belly and chest, and thinks, _What the hell,_ because it's not like any of this is normal, and dips down to lick it away with broad, lazy swipes of his tongue. It's easy; he doesn't even feel self conscious about it, though he can feel Dean watching him.

He's pulling back when he sees that Dean is completely hard again, and there isn't as much precome, which makes sense Sam guesses, but there is some, and Sam diverts his course just a little to taste that, too, on his belly, then directly from the tip of his cock.

Dean inhales sharply, but doesn't stop him. When Sam sits up, feeling slow and a little dazed, Dean gives him a momentarily piercing look, and then shifts and rolls over. He swings a leg over Sam's knees like he knows exactly what he's doing, like he's done it before, and Sam might believe it except that he doesn't get the height quite right, and if he thinks he's going to stay up on his hands like that, he's sorely mistaken.

Sam just knocks his knees a little wider apart, lowering him a bit, and pushes right in, one motion, rough and hot with friction, but wet enough with Sam's come not to be really dangerous. Dean coughs out a breath like he's been punched in the gut, and Sam feels almost mindless with it, and splays a hand between Dean's shoulder blades to push him down on his elbows. Dean goes right down, and the shift in angle and depth is perfect, and Sam breathes, "Perfect," and Dean grates out,

"Hurts," and Sam murmurs,

"It's okay," because he recognizes what he's hearing now.

He doesn't think. He will think later. He just gives Dean what he needs, grasps Dean's hips and jerks him back onto Sam's cock, and Dean shudders tightly. Sam's grip is slick with sweat, and he adjusts it so he's got two fingertips hooked around and digging into the tender flesh above Dean's hipbones, and Dean shoves back a little himself, an inch, like he can't help it, and then Sam is just driving into him and Dean is shaking, and eventually Sam shoves hard enough that he rides Dean flat onto the bed, and he can feel it in the whole stretch of Dean's body under him when Dean comes again. Sam follows immediately, breath coming in heaving pants, and then rolls off onto his back, aware of the catch in Dean's breath when he pulls out, but unable to think anything about it in the moment.

A few minutes later, when the big muscles in his thighs aren't burning and quivering as much and his breathing is almost normal again, he realizes Dean is snoring faintly beside him.

Sam forces himself up and takes care of Dean. There is a little blood this time, but from the look of Dean's hole, it's just a little membrane abrasion. It's just a tiny bit, and Sam isn't worried. He'll keep an eye on Dean for the next day or so, but it's probably fine.

He cleans up, brushes his teeth, takes a piss.

He does lie awake, though, this time. He circles and circles this thing, this idea, and it's almost an hour before he realizes that what he's really waiting for is for it to feel bad. To feel guilty, to feel dirty, to feel ashamed or afraid.

Sam doesn't want to hurt Dean. Not in any way, really. But this is different, and while he doesn't get off on hurting Dean, it’s ludicrous to try to pretend he doesn't want Dean desperately, almost any way he can have him, and this. He can do this. Dean wants it, and they aren't hurting anyone.

And Dean wants it.

He thinks about the ways in which Dean flings himself into fights, into danger, carefully looks for frightening corollaries, but this isn't that.

That is just Dean. Sam is careful. Dean is reckless. Together, they fight evil!

He smiles a little, and slumps down into his own bed, between crisp, unused sheets.

Sam can do this for Dean. It's fairly simple, really, and maybe it would be more complicated if they had regular lives. Maybe Dean would want things that Sam will never be able to bring himself to do, but their lives don't allow for that. They have to be able to fight in order to live, and Sam is willing to allow for a sore posterior, but not for deep muscle bruising or half-healed cuts.

And Dean wants it.


	3. 3

Sam wakes up late the next morning, and Dean has already finished cleaning the rest of their weapons and stowed them back in the bag. Sam's laptop is booted up and Bejeweled, but Dean isn't sitting in front of it. There is a pot of coffee in the tiny four cup motel room coffee maker, half-gone. Sam pours himself a cup and sips at it blurrily, then leaves it on the table to go take a piss and brush his teeth.

When he comes back out, Dean is leaning against the table, drinking Sam's coffee. Sam gives him a puzzled look; he hadn't heard Dean come in, and he's wet. Not soaking wet, but there are water splotches on his jeans, and a long, wet band across his chest. They're weirdly familiar, like runes Sam has seen before but can't translate immediately by sight, and then Sam has it. Dean was washing the car.

He does it when it needs it, but really, he does it when he's bored or when he needs to think. Sam is willing to bet that this time it was the latter, and isn't sure how to feel about it.

Sam doesn't even realize that he's still naked until Dean tips his gaze over the top of Sam's coffee cup and gives Sam a very deliberate, very thorough once over.

Sam blushes so fast it feels like he was dipped in scalding water, head first, and just stands there, not sure what to do. He's willing to stipulate that this is still very new, but he had sort of had the idea that it wasn't going to work this way.

Dean doesn't say anything, but he gives a weird little half smile that looks a little like his customary smirk, but seems entirely uncontrived. He takes a drink of Sam's coffee, and then looks at Sam again, his gaze hooking around Sam's hips, and hanging there for several seconds.

Sam is acutely aware of his hard on, a direct result of being checked out unexpectedly by his brother, and is blushing even more furiously. He's beginning to feel flustered, and he hates being flustered. Any second now, he's going to say something dickish, and he doesn't want to, he wants a few days of peace again, like before, but he's not going to be able to help it. He _hates_ being flustered.

Dean is looking at his face again, like he's actually looking for something, and Sam opens his mouth to say something really childish, but Dean says, "C'mere, Sammy."

Sam closes his mouth, uncertain, and takes a few steps toward Dean.

Dean shifts his feet wider apart, watching Sam like a hawk, and repeats, "C'mere, Sammy. Come on over here." His voice is mellow, pleasant, a little deeper than usual.

Sam goes, carefully, kind of slowly, but Dean is crazily, endlessly patient this morning, and he just watches Sam and waits for him.

When Sam is standing right in front of Dean, close enough that Dean has to tip his head up to look at Sam, which usually Dean hates, it usually makes Dean cranky as hell, but he seems completely easy about it right now, Dean says, "I don't want you to say anything unless you don't want to."

Which makes absolutely no sense at all. That sentence is definitely missing a verb or something.

Then Dean puts his hands on Sam's shoulders and exerts gentle downward pressure.

For several long seconds, Sam stands there, his mind blank and still.

He has no idea what's going on. He has no idea... has.

Then he is on his knees, both hands on the button fly of Dean's jeans. Dean catches his hands, and Sam looks up at him. Dean is watching him again, still sharp and searching, but there is some color in his face now, and his lower lip is shiny, like he just licked it. Sam tugs at his hands. "I want you to put your hands on the edge of the table," Dean says huskily.

Sam looks dumbly at him for a moment, and then drops his gaze to the table Dean's leaning his ass up against. There are clear spots on either side of Dean where the clutter of items on the table have been pushed back. There is also the very clear outline of Dean's hard on stretching the denim of his jeans, right in front of Sam's face.

Sam stares at it for some unknown amount of time, and then opens his mouth.

"I don't want you to talk unless you don't want to," Dean tells him again, still patient.

Sam shuts his mouth. He puts his hands on the edge of the table, wrapping his fingers around the top, his thumbs around the bottom of the edge. He looks up at Dean, and gets to actually see Dean's tongue swipe at his bottom lip.

Lust is dragging at the edges of Sam's mind, swirling thoughts and questions away equally, and there is a deep, knotted ache of want in his belly. He can hear his blood pounding in his ears and feel it throbbing in his throat. He can hear himself breathing so quickly he is almost panting. Dean is watching him. He reaches down and thumbs a lock of Sam's hair out of his eyes. Then he thumbs open the buttons of his jeans, neither fast nor slow, and shifts a little to pull his cock out.

Sam's gaze fixes on it. He watches a thin streamer of precome well up from the tip and slide down toward Dean's balls leaving a shiny trail. Sam's mouth falls open. He feels it happen and can't think about it and doesn't try to stop it. Dean makes a low, hot sound, and Sam's eyes fly up to his face, and Dean doesn't look like he does, like he has, he looks aching and knocked asunder, like Sam feels, looking at Sam with hot eyes and Sam makes some sort of fucked up noise, a small sound, hitching and hoarse, and Dean hooks a thumb around the base of his own cock and tips it down toward Sam's mouth.

"I want you to lick just the tip of my cock," Dean says, very low and very clear, and Sam shudders forward and does it, just the flat of his tongue, the very tip, right across the slit, and a tiny rush of precome, almost sweet, and then he leans back and closes his mouth and just lets the taste of Dean's precome sit on his tongue and make his mouth water until he has to swallow.

He looks up at Dean, blushing again helplessly, but he doesn't care now, he doesn't even care. Dean is looking at him like he is candy.

"Sammy," Dean says, and Sam shudders again, and Dean pushes his fingers into Sam's hair and doesn't pull or push or even hold Sam there, he just says, "I want you to suck me off, Sammy," and Sam goes right down, lunges -- there is no other word -- for it, and Dean holds it steady at just the right angle for him. Sam groans, his mouth flooded with the wide, hot expanse of Dean's cock, the slick-sweet taste of his precome, his own spit as his mouth waters, and it is not neat or slow or practiced, it is just wet and urgent, like he is helpless at it, like he couldn't stop if his life depended on it, and he doesn't even care, it is that fucking good. 

It seems like three seconds later when Dean says, "I want you to swallow," and then Sam is, and Dean's come is salty and thick and only a little bitter, and it seems like there is a lot, like he is swallowing forever, and Dean is touching Sam's face and Sam is moaning desperately around Dean's cock. 

Dean pulls away slowly, and Sam lets him go, panting and too-hot, the world narrowed to the pulsing ache in his balls and the place where Dean's hands are tucking Dean's spent cock back into his jeans and buttoning them up. Dean leans his ass back against the table, and Sam drags his eyes back up to Dean's face. Dean is looking down between them at Sam's cock. He is flushed and a little sweaty, but mostly he looks pleased. Just happy. Looking at Sam's cock. He looks back up at Sam's face, and still looks just as pleased, but also something else. Or less of something. Less scrutiny in his eyes.

"I want to watch you jerk off, Sammy," Dean says, and Sam makes some kind of choked, gasping sound of surprise, but he is already letting go of the table and spreading his knees, shifting back to rest his ass on his heels, one hand cupping his balls, the other tight around his cock, and it isn't going to take long regardless, but Dean says, "I want to see you come," and Sam is, just like that, face hot and tipped back and making a low, whining sound deep in his chest. 

Ten seconds later, while Sam is still trying to regain things like his breath and feeling to his knees and some kind of perspective on his fucking position in the universe, Dean says wryly, "I want you to watch where you're aiming that goddamned thing next time."

Sam looks, and sees one calf of Dean's jeans is striped with Sam's come, and huffs out a sound that turns out to be laughter. "You were asking for it," Sam croaks, and Dean's face creases into a grin so genuine that Sam answers it immediately, without hesitation, with one of his own.

Still grinning, Dean drops to one knee right between Sam's splayed thighs and leans in and kisses Sam right on the forehead. Sam is so stunned that he does nothing, and Dean drags Sam close and whispers, "You were so good, Sammy," right into Sam's ear, with his fingers buried in Sam's hair, and Sam shudders helplessly, hunched full body toward Dean. Dean lets him for two or three seconds, and then he gets back to his feet and heads for the door. "I gotta finish up the Impala," he tosses back over his shoulder casually, and leaves. 

"Holy shit," Sam says dumbly.

Eventually, he gets up and takes a shower and does all the routine shit you have to do to live, like dress and eat poptarts and check e-mail. There's one from Ellen which is basically a thank you note for taking care of a job she sent them on, and two from Bobby about the same job, the second just expanding on the first. Sam jots down some notes and thinks about how Dean will be tickled pink if this job turns out to be the real deal. He's just cracking the books when Dean comes in with a fast food bag and a gigantic coke, takes a look at Sam with his book, and smiles. "Whatcha got lined up, Sam?" he asks, and Sam tells him excitedly about the possibility of a rogue Valkyrie.

Dean's eyes light up like Christmas.

***

It _is_ a Valkyrie, but she's not rogue. She's possessed.

"How can that even happen," Sam yells, aggrieved, while they run for their lives. "They're from entirely different pantheons!"

"More things in Heaven and Earth, Sam," Dean yells back.

"Did you just quote _Hamlet_ at me?" Sam shouts, disbelieving.

"Go to Hell, Sam," Dean snarls.

"Don't you mean Helheim?" Sam taunts breathlessly.

"Cake hole!" Dean gasps.

Containing a possessed Valkyrie turns out to be a giant pain in the ass. The devil's trap works, sort of, but she has twenty foot wings of fire and can fly and summon a fiery steed and shoot actual bolts of death from her eyes -- they are not laser beams, no matter what Dean says -- so actually getting her someplace they can keep her _and_ someplace where they have cover so she can't kill them with her eyes proves to be problematic. The first time, they lure her into a high school gymnasium -- nothing else is really big enough -- and catch her just fine, but then she _uses her fiery wings_ to burn the wood and resin floor, which frees her and also smells wretched.

Sam eventually magic-smashes a devil's trap together with some Norse containment runes, creating an entirely new and totally experimental trap that will theoretically trap the demon with the devil's trap and block the bolts of death and fiery steed of the Valkyrie. They can't do anything about wings of fire. They're just going to have to make it really big. The part that takes the longest is the part that puts a top on the trap, because yes, they can trap her in a cylinder eternally, but she can fly straight up and stay out of range practically forever -- demon and Valkyrie, both immortal -- or until something happens to the circle, and then what have they accomplished, really?

So Sam has to do math in _Norse_ , which is insane and takes him days, while the Valkyrie-demon acts for all the world like a medieval fire-breathing dragon, razing villages and capturing maidens (Dean rescues two; Sam does math. The universe is not fair.) and when Dean isn't rescuing, he's hanging around and making Sam take breaks to eat and sleep and spitting on his thumb to wipe ink off Sam's face, and generally acting like the world's most annoying mom, which makes it make even less sense that Sam is having a fucking great time.

It works more or less as planned. More or less.

They actually have to hold her for four extra days while Sam researches and hangs together something like an exorcism ritual _in Norse_ when none of the usuals work, and in the end, Sam thinks it was as much the will of the Valkyrie herself as it was the ritual that casts the demon out. Neither would have been enough without the other, is his expert opinion.

But the Valkyrie is _awesome_.

Not a lot of conversation, but untainted by demon, she is so bright and fierce and beautiful that it burns to look at her. She touches both of their heads and intones _"Honored heroes, both, a joy to Midgard, and a credit. I will come for you myself when it is time, and stand for you in Valhalla. Be true."_ in a voice that literally shakes the Earth. She takes their hands in one of hers each, and there is a bright, almost euphoric bolt of pain, and then she is gone.

Dean says, conversationally, "I didn't know they had wings of fire. Did you know they had wings of fire?"

"But, what, you knew they shot bolts of death from their eyes?" Sam scoffs.

"Laser beams," Dean says.

" _Bolts of death_ ," Sam insists. "More things in Heaven and Earth, Dean."

Dean scowls at him.

Sam looks down at his hand, and burned into the back like a brand is the crest on her cloak.

He laughs so hard he has to sit down, and Dean stares at him like he's totally insane.

"Dean, Dean," he says, choking on laughter, "A Valkyrie just gave us a _spear and magic helmet_ ," and holds up the brand on his hand where Dean can see it.

Dean's eyebrows try to shoot off his face, he looks down at his own hand, and then tips his face up to the sky and howls with laughter.

***

They drive straight to Bobby's. They're only six hours away, and it's an awesome story. Dean is practically wriggling with glee in the driver’s seat, clearly impatient to tell it, and Sam is almost as grinningly eager.

They manage to make a hell of an entrance, too.

Not deliberately, but still.

Sam has always known Bobby's place is insanely warded, hell, he's helped carve new wards and symbols into the walls and into the bedrock outside, four feet down, but he has never seen anything as spectacularly visual as what happens when they get out of the car and head toward the house. Six feet from the door they both stop, as one, and there is a thunderclap and an actual _bolt of lightning_ strikes the ground right in front of their feet.

When Sam can see again, there is a hole in the ground six feet wide, revealing a line of Norse runes carved into the bedrock and lined with iron. He puts out his hand, and can feel the resistance, but it doesn't hurt or knock him back. It's just there. He has the idea that he could push through it if he absolutely had to, but it would suck.

"Whoa," Dean says.

Bobby runs out onto the porch, and stands gaping at them, and the trench in his dooryard. It only takes him a few seconds to get over it; Bobby's great at rolling with the punches. He takes off his cap, pushes back his hair, and puts it back on.

"So it was an actual Valkyrie?" he asks, almost casually.

Sam and Dean nod excitedly.

"You are welcome in my home, always," Bobby announces, repeats it in broken Norse, and the earth groans beneath their feet for a moment, and the dooryard swallows up the trench like it was never there.

"What the hell?" Dean says, wide-eyed.

"It's magic," Sam says placidly, and Dean punches him on the arm.

Bobby gets so excited about their brands that Sam is briefly worried about him, but lets Bobby take digital pictures at the highest resolution he can manage, and Sam shows him how to hook Sam's laptop up to Bobby's television so they can see the whole thing at once, in Hi-Def.

"Son of a bitch," Bobby says reverently.

In Hi-Def, what looks like an old, healed branding scar, white and raised on the back of Sam's hand, looks like dozens or maybe hundreds of insanely tiny runes twisted together into the outline of a spear and a helmet.

"I'll never be able to reproduce it," Bobby says, and he sounds a little disappointed, but when he looks at them his eyes are delighted. "You boys are probably the first mortals in centuries to be marked by a Valkyrie." His voice is bursting with pride.

Then his eyes get huge, and he runs into the kitchen. They follow him, and he grabs a Big Gulp glass out of the dish drainer and fills it with water from the tap. "Put your hand in this," he orders, and gives it to Dean, probably because his hands are smaller.

Dean does it, and the water glows white-bright and bubbles around his hand for a moment, and then settles down into water again.

Bobby beams.

"You can bless it," he tells them smugly. Like this is somehow all his own doing.

Which it sort of is, Sam supposes.

"Like holy water?" Dean asks hopefully.

Bobby tips a hand from side to side. "Well, Norse holy water," Bobby says. "Don't know how much good it'll really do you against regular demons, but it probably can't hurt. I wouldn't go demon hunting without the regular kind, but if you get the chance to test it..." He shrugs. "Can probably bless weapons, too, though them you'd have to bleed on, I'm bettin'."

"Happens all the time anyway," Dean notes.

"Every little bit helps," Bobby says philosophically. "Now tell me everything," which they do.

***

They stay overnight at Bobby's, and have biscuits and gravy the next morning. Bobby doesn't have anything pressing for them, though he gives them a small list of leads to look into, but they leave anyway. They aren't headed anywhere in particular, and they barely make a hundred miles before Dean takes an exit ramp to a medium sized city, and they make their way into another in a long line of tragic motel rooms.

Sam guesses that they're going to have sex, and he's pretty sure Dean thinks the same thing, that sex was kind of the point of stopping here, but what actually happens is they go get lunch at Applebee's, and it's not like they never eat anywhere normal, but it's rare enough that it feels a little weird to be sitting in Applebee's with a kid's birthday party three tables away. They give each other slightly wide-eyed looks across the table, and Sam eventually leans forward in such a way that compels Dean to lean over too, and mutters, "Am I the only one who feels like our very presence here could imperil everyone else present?"

"Imperil," Dean mocks, smirking, but then nods. "I ain't arguing the content."

They get their order to go, and are in the act of walking across the parking lot toward the Impala when Dean tips his head a little to one side, gaze far away, and says, "Dude, does that look like a video arcade to you?"

It does, and it is. No outside food or drink is allowed, so Sam and Dean eat their Applebee's in the parking lot, and throw the packaging away in the can outside the door.

So instead of having sex, they spend six hours and four hundred fake-credit-card-dollars so Sam can kick Dean's ass at skeeball (because Sam has freakishly long arms, apparently) and Dean can kick Sam's ass at _Need For Speed_ (and this is why Dean always drives, apparently). Dean wins enough tickets for a(nother) Zippo (he has three or four at any given time, and says it's just practical), and Sam uses his for four giant elephants, which he then gives to a mom and her three kids.

"Man, you're disgusting," Dean says, but Sam catches him grinning over his shoulder at the youngest kid who is maybe four, and the elephant he's clutching which is almost as big as he is. Sam heroically doesn't say anything pointed. They walk across a sea of parking lots to get back to the Impala, which they'd left at Applebee's, and Dean says, "You want to grab a beer?"

"Sure," Sam says comfortably, and even allows Dean to take them to a dive, because that's just the kind of bar Dean is happy in. "No pool," he warns, however, because he's not stupid.

"Okay," Dean agrees easily, which is reassuring.

The truth is, Dean sometimes does go looking for trouble. Dean denies it, but they both know it's true. He gets itchy sometimes, and if there isn't anything better to do, he goes looking for trouble.

They have a couple of beers, rehash the general awesomeness of the Valkyrie, and then throw some darts. They aren't hustling anything; they're playing each other.

A girl in a pink tube top comes over and chats with them for a while, hits on Dean pretty blatantly, Dean flirts her gently away -- and Sam has seen Dean gently turning a girl down before, but not often, and Sam's never paid attention enough to realize that Dean is pretty good at it, or to wonder how often Dean has to use this skill -- and they are actually talking about heading back to the motel when the trouble starts.

A guy in a polo shirt comes over and stands practically on Sam's feet. He's Dean's size, so not small, but Sam still towers over him. The guy has a receding hairline and improbably thick gym-biceps, and Sam doesn't bother to do anything about it when the guy grabs him. He's more bemused than anything else. Nobody ever grabs him. Dean is always the one being grabbed.

"Hey, buddy," the guy says belligerently.

Sam glances at Dean, who also looks a little bemused, but is looking fixedly at the guy's hands around Sam's forearms.

"Hey," the guy says again.

"Yes?" Sam asks politely.

"My lady says you were hitting on her." The guy bares his teeth, and Sam isn't even remotely scared. This is the first time he's the one being accused of hitting on someone else's lady, and he will make fun of Dean later, that the girl hadn't even remembered which one of them had turned her down. He has the bizarre urge to laugh, and wonders if this is the reason Dean ends up in fights, because he just isn't scared of things, and thus reacts inappropriately to the threat of violence. Huh. It's a theory. "I'm sorry, am I boring you, buddy?" the guy demands, and tries to give Sam a shake.

Sam sets his feet and does not allow himself to be shaken. "This is a misunderstanding," he says quietly. "Let go of me, I'll leave, and everyone will be happy."

"I think I'm going to kick your ass," the guy says.

"Do you?" Sam asks, amused, it trips right off Sam's tongue without any forethought at all, and the guy's face darkens from belligerence to genuine anger.

It's definitely a theory, Sam decides.

"Please stop touching him," Dean says tightly, and Sam and the guy both turn to look at him.

Dean's expression is hard-jawed and forbidding, and Sam recognizes it with a dip of his stomach. Dean has all of his attention focused on the guy still holding onto Sam's forearms, and that guy has no way of knowing that the brittle politeness of Dean's tone is only one of the danger signals Dean is broadcasting right now.

"Why, he your boyfriend?" the guy sneers, and curls his hands tighter around Sam's forearms.

Dean's nostrils flare, and that is just not good. "He's my brother," Dean says. "Let 'im go."

Sam, who is actually trying to help this guy survive the night now, twists his forearms neatly out of the guy's grip; it's not hard. The guy has some muscle, but he doesn't know what to do with it. "It's time for you to go now," Sam says, and steps back.

The guy has no instinct for self-preservation. He steps right back into Sam's space, and grabs the front of Sam's shirt in both hands.

Dean, who believes religiously in three strikes and you're out, abandons all pretense of that brittle politeness and says, with a huge, sincere smile, "If you don't get your hands off 'im right now, I'm gonna rip your fucking trachea out."

For a wonder, the guy does let Sam go, but only so he can whirl on Dean and shove him hard in the chest. "You want some of this?" the guy demands furiously, apparently somehow unaware of the fact that his shove barely rocks Dean back on his heels.

"Yes, please," Dean says, still smiling widely, and the guy reaches for Dean -- he's an idiot, you _never_ grapple with Dean if there is any other option, Dean is killer up close -- and Sam cocks his elbow up as high as he can and drives his fist straight down into the guy's jaw.

The guy drops where he is, soundlessly.

"Holy shit, Sammy!" Dean crows, clearly delightedly astonished. "Man, that was a sweet throw!"

"He was going to hit you," Sam says, trying to sound like the adult in this relationship, as usual, but his lips keep trying to quirk up into a smile.

"He was never gonna land anything and you know it." Dean grins smugly, and punches Sam's arm approvingly.

_Punches Sam's arm approvingly._

He can't even believe he strung that thought together. Approving punches, knocking out random guys in bar fights. It's like he's been over-exposed to _Dean._ It's like Dean is _contagious_ , oh Christ, what a horrible idea.

"We should get out of here before--" Sam says, but Dean interrupts, perhaps inevitably.

"Too late." Dean manages to sound both cheerful and serious at the same time, which Sam knows to interpret as: A lot.

Sam lets Dean worry about them for a few seconds and takes a quick survey of the room. There are several things that can be used for weapons, including the table legs in a pinch -- the stools are steel and solid, unfortunately, far too unwieldy, but the tables are wood -- but not much of it is useful. Sam could kill a man with his beer glass or the napkin dispenser, but he doesn't want to kill anyone.

"You always get us into trouble," Sam complains, and moves up behind Dean's shoulder, observing the situation.

The bar isn't that big, and now it is very quiet. Six guys in various sizes have squared up. The twenty or so other patrons are moving out of the way. Nobody's leaving, which is telling. Either fights don't happen here often, or they happen all the time.

The bartender yells, "Take it outside," without any real hope.

Then Dean opens his mouth. "You know, you're just about Sammy's size," he says, friendly and smiling. "You don't see that a lot, y'know? I mean, I bet you win a lot of fights just 'cause you're so damned big."

"My share," the guy Dean's talking to says placidly. He's not that much older than Dean, and he's as tall as Sam, that's true enough. He's also barrel chested, and has thighs like tree trunks.

"What are you doing, Dean?" Sam asks, with real dread.

"I think Sammy can take you, square," Dean says, slick. He waves his hand vaguely in the direction of their fallen friend. "I get you guys being good friends and shit, I really do, and if you feel real strong about it we can do it this way." He grins like a shark. "I bet the eight of us can trash most of the furniture in this room, and get banned for life from this bar." He slaps the back of his hand against Sam's chest. "Or we can find out if my giant can beat your giant, and call that an even finish. Nobody goes home missing teeth."

"Dean!" Sam says.

"Hush, Sammy, let me do the talkin'," Dean says, and Sam has to restrain himself from slapping Dean in the back of the head. Then Dean twists a little and aims a sly smile at Sam. "C'mon, Sam. Don't tell me you don't want to know."

And, oh God, it _is_ contagious, because Sam totally does.

"You were going to rip that other guy's arms off for messing with me," Sam points out. Struggling to be the voice of reason. The voice of reason is why God gave Dean a brother, Sam is pretty sure.

"He was grabbing you," Dean says, as if that explains it.

"If I fight, hi, I'm sorry, what's your name?" Sam asks politely.

"Ben," Sam's Death Match opponent provides helpfully.

"Thanks. Dean, if I fight Ben, there's going to be grabbing," Sam says.

"Yeah, but that other fucker was grabbing you without your permission, Sammy. He was being a dick. This is mutual, consensual grabbing. It's totally different."

It is really horrifying how sincere Dean can look when Sam knows full well he's just being evil.

"I hate you so much right now," Sam says feelingly.

Dean takes that as permission, which it unfortunately is, and gives Ben the same sly smile. "Don't you want to know?" Dean asks him.

The guy gives Sam a considering look, like he hasn't been eyeballing Sam throughout the discussion. Bizarrely, his buddies also seem to be seriously considering this as a viable option. Dean's jibe about the bar, probably. All in a group like this, these are probably local guys.

Or Dean's got some kind of reality warping power of suggestion.

Which actually doesn't seem as unlikely as it should.

"How do things like this always happen around you?" Sam says, feeling weird and exhilarated and surly all at once. He shrugs his jacket and the long sleeve button up underneath it off and drapes them over a stool. He stands there in his jeans and t-shirt and sneakers, and knows he looks nowhere near as badass as Ben does, in his leather vest and boots and stubbly rugged face. He knows it doesn't really matter. Ben is probably trying to guess whether he's got reach on Sam. Sam already knows that Ben does, and is thinking it's been so long since he's fought anybody who is only human, he has to be careful not to really hurt this guy.

"You a martial artist, Sam?" Ben asks, which is actually pretty smart.

"Never even been in a studio," Sam answers honestly. "My dad taught me everything I know."

"You wound me, Sammy," Dean says.

"Let the grownups talk, Dean," Sam says.

Ben shrugs off his vest, and takes off two big silver rings, handing them to one of the other guys. "You aren't going to ask me the same question?" Ben asks.

"I really like you," Sam says honestly. "Thanks for the rings, by the way. My split lip in the morning is already grateful. I apologize that my brother is inevitably going to say something awful at some point; try to forgive him. He can't control himself."

"Yeah, well. I'm sorry Ray thinks with his little head," Ben says wryly, and glances at the girl in the pink tube top. "He's a pretty good guy. You really rang his bell."

Sam shrugs with one shoulder. "So are you a martial artist?" He's betting on no.

"Nah. You looked like you could have the build for it, though, seemed like a good idea to check."

They grin at each other over everyone else's heads. It's a unique perspective, Dean is right. Sam doesn't really get to share it with many other people.

"So, you want to take it outside? This is you guys' bar, right?" Cue Dean's fucked up and totally random sense of fair play.

All six of the other guys look almost as surprised as Sam is.

"Yeah," Ben says. "That would be good."

So, in insane world where Sam now lives with Dean, all eight of them file out the front door and move in a huddle to the back of the parking lot, where there's plenty of room. A sizable number of the patrons follow them out.

It's like an even crazier version of Fight Club.

It's misting out, and is chilly but not cold. As soon as they stop, Sam strips his t-shirt off and hands it to Dean. Dean slides it inside Sam's jacket with a nod.

Ben says, "Is there a rule I should know about?" but he sounds more amused than anything else.

"No sense getting my shirt wet. Then I'll be cold and wet and have a split lip when we're done."

Ben nods and leaves his shirt on, which is more than okay with Sam. It's stellar.

"No groin," Dean says firmly. "Other than that, just don't kill each other."

Ben and Sam have the same basic style. They're both distance fighters, long legs and long arms, the easy understanding that they don't have to get up close, it gives them no advantage, it just lets the other guy get close enough to hit them. There's no way to fight each other like that. It'll take years.

They circle for fifteen seconds or so before Sam ducks in closer to get an idea of how it's going to go.

He aims a tight punch at Ben's ribs, Ben twists enough to make it glancing, and Ben throws a roundhouse that would have knocked Sam down if it had landed. It's way too wide and slow, though, Sam ducks under it easily, and clips Ben a good one on the chin. Ben still manages to punch Sam square in the chest, Sam not quite fast enough to dance out of his longer reach. Sam wheezes, but catches Ben's fist as he draws it back and reels Ben in like a yo-yo, holds him by the shirt and elbows him in the face.

Ben staggers backward, and Sam lets go and plays up how winded he is, because he could take Ben down, but Sam doesn't want to show him up quite that badly in front of his friends. He likes Ben.

Sadly, it looks a lot like he's broken Ben's nose.

Ben shakes it off after a few seconds, bends and blows blood and snot out both nostrils and then wipes the whole mess unconcernedly on his jeans and wades back in. Ben is pretty cool.

Sam takes three or four solid body punches, turning just enough to shift and decrease the force or the contact point. It still hurts, but it doesn't hurt badly enough to stop him. When Ben tries his own maneuver to pull Sam in close, Sam snaps his hips and jerks hard and his wet skin slides right out Ben's grasp.

"Oh, fuck's sake," Ben says, and Sam grins at him. Ben grins unwillingly back.

They circle, and Ben rabbit punches Sam in the kidney. Sam kicks Ben's legs out from under him, and has to remind himself not to kick him while he's down. True to his prediction, Sam takes a blow to the face, which splits his lip only because he jerks back and up at once to avoid a broken nose. He spits blood on Ben's shirt in retaliation.

"Oh, real nice, Sam," Dean scolds from the sidelines.

"What, you only take head shots?" Ben demands, after Sam has clipped him in the ear twice in rapid succession.

"You're built like a bull," Sam says easily. "Your face is my best bet."

"Could you maybe avoid deafening me?" Ben says, and jams a hard, perfect punch into Sam's solar plexus.

Sam flails back, and fails to both breathe and keep his feet. He rolls immediately away, keeping his eyes open, and when Ben follows him, rolls directly back into his legs. Ben falls to his hands and knees, and Sam hurls himself at his back, elbow first, and Ben goes down with a groan, full body on the ground. Sam hisses in a partial breath, twists Ben's arm up behind his back into a simple pin, and sits on top of him.

"Yeah, yeah," Ben wheezes. "You win, get off me."

"I think you broke my breastbone, you dick," Sam wheezes back, and helps Ben up.

"Good job, Sam," Dean says, and hands him a handkerchief for his bleeding face.

"Cake hole," Sam says, still wheezing.

"You didn't suck," Dean says, and claps Ben on the back. Only Sam sees Ben rolling his eyes. Sam rolls his eyes in sympathy.

Ben's gang invite them back into the bar and buys a round of drinks, and they play pool not-for-money for the rest of the night. Dean stops after two beers, so Sam gets rousingly drunk in public for the first time in so many months he can't really remember, and he exchanges cell phone numbers with Ben, which is surreal. Sam thinks Dean is the only point in the universe at which two strangers could form a good relationship of any kind based on a broken nose and a fist-shaped bruise the size of a ham. At some blurry point in the evening Ray regains consciousness and doesn't even remember having a conversation with Sam or Dean, and Ben laughs so hard his nose starts bleeding again. Dean takes a look at it and sets it for him, and then buys him another beer to dull the pain. Someone tells a joke about a penguin with a popsicle in a desert, and Dean almost falls over backward off his bar stool. Sam is so drunk his lips feel numb, but he catches Dean handily and deposits him back on his stool.

He's pretty sure he declares that he has Dean's back with drunken sincerity, but that could be the alcohol.

When they get back to the motel, Sam is still so drunk he is staggering. Dean slides under one arm and steers him across the parking lot and into the room, and dumps Sam easily onto his bed.

"You threw that fight so hard it came all the way around to the other side," Dean tells Sam in a low, grinning voice, and forces two glasses of water and four Ibuprofen into Sam. Dean strips him down to his boxers, just like he's done every time Sam has been drunk and he has been sober for their whole lives, and the only thing that's a little different is that Dean hovers over him for a few seconds in the dark, and then brushes a finger across Sam's split lower lip. "You holler if you need to be sick," he tells Sam.

Sam immediately passes out.

When Sam wakes up, the light tells him it's already well into afternoon. He can smell food, fast food of the greasy variety, and his stomach clenches with both hunger and nausea. His head barely hurts at all, however, which is some small comfort.

Dean appears if by magic, gives Sam a long look, and then makes him drink another glass of water and take two more Ibuprofen. He bullies Sam into trying a burger -- "Just one bite, Sam, come on." -- and Sam ends up devouring it in four bites, and wordlessly accepts another one when Dean offers it, and nearly swallows that one whole as well. Dean hands him coffee, and Sam drinks that, too.

Sam goes to the bathroom and takes a piss, thinks about brushing his teeth and taking a shower, and then decides it can wait until after more coffee.

"You smell like a brewery," Dean tells him happily.

Sam, feeling very nearly human again, gives Dean his not-impressed face, and says, "No thanks to you." He's a little sore, and there is a giant bruise on his chest. The coffee makes his lower lip sting, but when Sam runs his tongue over it, it doesn't even feel swollen. Just a little sore.

"You had fun," Dean says smugly.

Sam ignores him, and works his way steadily through a carton of fries. Dean keeps his coffee cup full.

Once he's full, Sam eyes his bed, feeling sleepy again. He tells himself that they should find some work, but can't quite convince himself that a nap isn't a good idea.

"Gonna stay another night," Dean says. He's not looking at Sam at all when Sam looks over; he's clicking through tabs on Sam's laptop. "I might have something in Utah, but I'm gonna look into it more."

"I might sleep more," Sam says experimentally.

"Sure," Dean says without looking up.

Sam falls asleep again quickly.


	4. 4

Sam wakes up because Dean is dragging his boxers down his thighs.

Dean looks up immediately, sensing Sam's wakefulness. It's still daylight out, and the room is bright. Dean licks his lips, and says, "I may not be any good at it."

Sam knows what he's talking about immediately, and also knows it absolutely doesn't matter. If Dean puts his mouth on Sam's cock, Sam is going to love it.

Dean hooks both hands around Sam's wrists for a second, pushing them firmly against the bed. "I don't want you to move unless you want me to stop," Dean says.

Sam has a brief but very bright moment of clarity in which the feel of Dean's hands pressing his wrists down illuminates the fact that Dean is not the only one of them that might want something that their lives make difficult, if not impossible.

And that Dean somehow knows this.

Sam nods, mouth dry.

Dean nods back, and lets Sam's wrists go. The skin where Dean's hands had been is abruptly too cool. Sam very carefully does not move them.

Dean leaves Sam's boxers halfway down his thighs, and moves down a little so he's bent over Sam's hips.

Dean has absolutely no shyness or uncertainty in him. Sam knows this, has known it for years, but it's a different animal when Dean is lifting Sam's cock off his belly and studying it with unguarded curiosity, using both hands to explore the weight of it, fingertips pressing behind the head, skating around the glans, tracing the vein all the way down the underside to Sam's balls. Dean cups Sam's balls carefully, weighing them in his palm, and then wraps his other hand around Sam's cock and gives it one hard, long stroke.

Sam makes a low sound, and Dean looks up at him. He smiles faintly. "You can move enough to breathe, Sammy," he says.

Surprised, Sam lets out a harsh breath, which he had definitely been unintentionally holding, and sucks in another to replace it.

Dean doesn't go down on him all at once, as Sam half-expected. Dean does almost everything full speed ahead. He also doesn't just lick the shaft and suck on the head, which is what most people do when confronted with Sam's cock, and which Sam has always sympathetically understood, because really. He is big. Sucking his cock has to be kind of hard. 

Dean licks the tip thoughtfully, licks his lips, and then wraps them around the head of Sam's cock as though gauging the width of it. Sam makes a piteous noise. Dean pulls back, lips curved faintly upward, and adjusts his body, moving down a little more and rounding his shoulders. Then he slides his mouth down slowly, finds out how far he can comfortably go, and wraps his hand around the rest. He pulls off again, and Sam's cock jerks at the cool air on his wet skin. Dean presses the heel of one hand firmly against one of Sam's hipbones, and then goes down again, this time with more spit and less care. It takes him two strokes to find a rhythm between his hand and mouth, and Sam's eyes are already rolling into the back of his head.

It's not as clumsy as Sam would have guessed, he doesn't feel Dean's teeth once, it is just wet and slick-soft pressure and so hot Sam hears himself groan out Dean's name, low and pleading and long, for such a short word.

Dean pulls off, and Sam chokes out a senseless objection, but Dean's hand is still working Sam's cock, wet with Dean's spit, and when Sam looks down the length of his body at Dean, Dean's mouth is red and his face is flushed and he's looking at Sam like he's a fully automatic machine gun that Dean can't wait to play with. "I need you not to move, Sammy," Dean says, and pushes down with the hand on Sam's hip.

Sam hadn't even realized he was rocking them up, and goes still at once, stammers out, "Sorry, I--" but Dean doesn't give him a chance to finish, just goes back down, and Sam watches, wordlessly shocked and so turned on he might die at the way Dean's mouth stretches around Sam's cock, the way he's flushed and breathing hard through his nose, eyes closed in what could be concentration or pleasure or both.

"Oh my God," Sam says brokenly, and goes totally limp, head falling back onto the pillow, his whole body so heavy and hot that he feels like he might never move again. Dean's tongue slides up over the head of Sam's cock experimentally on the next upstroke, and Sam doesn't even feel the urge to move, he just moans, "Dean, oh my God," with a kind of helpless wonder. Dean, apparently aware that his grip on Sam's hip is no longer needed, slides it down to cup Sam's balls, and Sam shudders and sucks in a breath that seems to break apart somewhere between his throat and his chest, and does him no good. He still feels like he's smothering.

Sam's orgasm is building at the base of his spine, and he can't do anything about it, can't thrust or jerk or strain toward it, can't do anything that he associates with getting to it, so it just boils there rolling and burning, and Sam sweats and shivers and moans out his need hoarsely and ceaselessly, growing in volume and climbing in pitch the longer it goes on, and Dean pushes his balls up a little as though in encouragement, and makes a thick sound around Sam's cock, and Sam cries out and comes without even tensing, just shaking and shouting something he can't understand. Dean doesn't try to swallow, just lets it slide down Sam's cock and his own chin, and doesn't stop sucking or stroking until Sam falls exhaustedly quiet.

Dean pulls off and wipes absently at his chin with the back of his hand. "Give me your hands," Dean says, voice a little raw, shooting sharp spikes of hot desire along Sam's nerve endings that Sam's body is too exhausted to do anything about. Sam holds them up, and Dean crosses them over Sam's belly at the wrists, and uses one hand to hold them there. Sam could get out of Dean's grip in about two seconds, and doesn't have the faintest desire to try. Dean braces himself up with the same arm, and uses the other hand to jerk open the fly of his jeans in one practiced motion. Dean's cock is so deeply red it looks angry, and streams out a thin line of precome as Sam watches, which drips off the head and lands on Sam's cock.

Sam's breath leaves him in a rush, and Dean does something fast and incomprehensible to Sam's flaccid cock, and then wraps his hand around his own cock. He strokes himself once, hand so tight his knuckles are white, and it's only when he does it again that Sam realizes that Dean has slicked his hand with Sam's come, is jerking off with his hand and cock wet with Sam's come, and Sam's balls clench so hard that his voice breaks on Dean's name. Sam looks up, and Dean is watching him, his face, eyes dark and glittering, teeth clenched, his whole face a deep vision of open lust. His hand tightens around Sam's wrists, and Sam moans out, "Come," and Dean does, hot and wet across Sam's spent cock and belly. 

Dean lets go of Sam's wrists, and so fast that Sam wouldn't have been able to stop him even had he been inclined to, he jerks Sam upright by both shoulders, one hand slick with come, and drags Sam against his chest. He shoves a hand into Sam's hair and tucks Sam's head under his chin, and kisses the top of Sam's head hard. "Sam," he says, as though it's wrenched, struggling, out of his guts.

Sam would sit there all day.

After a few seconds, Dean lets him go, and Sam falls bonelessly back down onto the bed.

The two of them are a mess. There is come all over Sam, and Dean's t-shirt is streaked with it. His cock is still hanging out of his jeans, soft and innocent looking, now. Sam's boxers are still twisted around his thighs. Dean's mouth is still deeply red, his lips a little swollen. Sam still feels like he can barely breathe.

Dean's lips twitch, and he says, "You've got come in your hair, dude," like it is somehow Sam's fault.

"I'm pretty sure I didn't come in my own hair, Dean," Sam says seriously.

Dean gives Sam's cock a considering look, and says, "I bet if you kind of hunched over while you're jerking off, you probably could."

"I'll take it under advisement," Sam says, grinning. Dean grins back.

"Take a shower, Sammy. You stink."

And it is fucked up. The whole thing is fucked up in a way that is improbably fantastically good, and completely fascinating.

***

Sam sits down in the shower with his back to the spray, partly to let the hot water ease some of the soreness left over from the fight out of his back, but partly to think.

He isn't entirely ignorant of what is going on between him and Dean. He has access to the internet, and he knows how to use it. He's seen his fair share of porn.

This thing, there are words to describe it, there is a whole culture for it, it has _acronyms_.

Sam could Google it and assign them both letters, although he knows what the letters stand for, in general, and sees how some of them apply, but it's all... mixed up. The two of them don't quite fit into the acronyms in a way that makes sense, which doesn't particularly surprise Sam, honestly. The two of them don't quite fit into the real world at all.

And he is unexpectedly loathe to try to fit them in.

Sam loves research, he loves knowing. It's the part of the job he does best, and he takes comfort in understanding how things work, the rituals to use, the words to say, the ability to classify things.

That he knows that there are words and rituals and classifications for this out there, that he could find them and learn them and apply them, feels completely wrong.

He doesn't want that.

He wants Dean. He doesn't care about Dean's letters, doesn't care whether or not they fit with Sam's letters.

He wants Dean, and the careful breakdown of information he could memorize doesn't mean anything next to that fact.

The admission relieves some knotty tension that has been roosting in his belly.

"Sammy," Dean shouts, banging on the bathroom door. "You jerking off in there?"

"Fuck off, jerk," Sam shouts back, and stands up.

"Watch your mouth, bitch," Dean shouts back congenially.

Sam washes the come out of his hair.

***

Utah turns out to be another weird-ass job in a series of weirder-than-usual jobs.

The first weird thing is that the family being haunted placed an ad in their local newspaper.

Sam comes out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist, and Dean is on the phone. "Yes, ma'am, I understand. And you've all fallen down the... your son? Okay, and what makes you think... Ah." Dean looks at Sam and makes a face that clearly communicates that this is weird shit. "And you saw it?" Dean's eyebrows climb a little. "We can make it by tomorrow night." Dean blinks. "Okay, we'll stop by the next morning. Yes, ma'am. Enjoy your movie."

Dean flips his phone closed and looks at Sam.

"Their house is haunted by their dead cat," Dean tells him.

"They've seen...?"

"Their son says he has. He's four, so it's possible. Little kids sometimes see shit. But it's a cat. I mean, assuming they're right. Isn't that like, cross-jurisdictional or something?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "What do you know about animal spirits?" he asks, even as he opens a new tab in Firefox.

***

The next morning, Dean takes the first leg of the drive over Sam's protests. Sam isn't even a little tired. All told, he's probably slept twenty of the last forty-eight hours, which is more sleep than he's had over two days in longer than he can remember, if you don't count being rendered unconscious by monsters.

In retaliation, Sam boots up iTunes and scrolls through his list of music, picking songs mostly at random to play as loud as his computer will go.

"Sound quality on that thing blows, Sam," Dean tells him, apparently unbothered.

"Yeah, I had an iPod, but." He'd lost it in the fire, and he just didn't ever replace it. "This isn't so bad if you listen with headphones."

"Which defeats the purpose, if you're doing it to torture me," Dean says understandingly.

Sam hides his smile, but then changes his mind and starts picking out stuff he thinks Dean might actually like. He tries couple of things he already knows Dean likes. The two bands that Sam and Dean wholly agree on are Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd. Sam likes some songs from a few other groups Dean likes, but the rest are hit or miss. So Sam plays _Dark Side of the Moon_ and then _Seventh Son of a Seventh Son,_ which makes Dean smirk with amusement, as songs about the occult often do.

While those play, Sam starts making a Dean playlist, scrolling furiously through three thousand songs. He manages to pick out six in the time it takes to play the other two.

"Keep an open mind, Dean," Sam says, and starts him off with The Offspring, which, when Sam thinks about it, is in every way relevant to their daily lives so much it loses most of it's humor and is merely terrifying. It's still a good song, though.

Dean listens all the way through. He starts smiling a little about a third of the way in, and at the end, he says, "Lemme hear it again."

They listen to it on repeat for twenty-six miles, and the whole experiment is worth is just to hear Dean yell-singing along with _Shit is Fucked Up._

Sam nails five out of his six picks, ditches the miss off the Dean playlist, and makes a new playlist that he names Untested Dean. He spends the next two hours -- until his battery dies -- dragging songs into Untested Dean, forcing them on Dean, and either ditching them or adding them to the Dean playlist. Maybe he can burn a CD, find an old boombox with a tape deck and a CD player, find the last store in the continental US that sells blank cassettes and make Dean a tape.

_A mix tape._

"Oh my God," Sam says out loud, mortified.

Dean shoots him a sideways look, and just shrugs when Sam silently shakes his head.


	5. 5

The thing about animals is that they just don't really think enough to leave behind vengeful spirits. It does happen, there is lore, but it's pretty rare.

Sam really expects this cat to be a haunting, but not a vengeful cat haunting. He figures it's just the regular sort, and this family's son is traumatized by the death of his pet, and connecting the two in his mind. It makes the most sense.

But no, it's actually a cat spirit. It manages to trip Sam and Dean both down the stairs at once, and then hisses and spits at them when Sam gets a grip on the banister halfway down and doesn't fall, and also blocks Dean's fall by dint of just being in Dean's way.

"Shit is fucked up," Dean says, surprised.

Sam grins.

Dean asks the dad where the cat is buried, he tells Dean that they just took the body to the dump, and Sam thinks Dean is going to have an aneurysm for a few seconds.

"How exactly did your cat die a violent enough death to leave a vengeful spirit?" Sam asks.

Mr. Baker looks embarrassed and guilty. "I backed over her with the car."

Sam does some research on banishing vengeful animal spirits when there is no body available, while Dean dump dives with nothing but a general area in which to look. The universe is fairer than usual. Sam can't help but be a little smug about it.

Sam finds several summoning and trapping rituals, but there isn't much in the way of banishing. Regular spirits, sure, poltergeists, simple stuff, but with vengeful spirits, it's salt and burn. It takes him a while to find a couple of things that might work, and then goes shopping to get supplies.

When he gets back, Dean is standing outside the motel room. All four doors of the Impala are open, and Sam can smell them both from halfway across the parking lot. Sam gets as close as he can, wincing. "Dean?" he asks.

"I can't even smell myself anymore," Dean says tightly, a muscle cranking in his jaw, "but I gotta smell like the first ten fucking minutes of that place, before my sense of smell broke off. I figured you didn't want to spend the night in a room that reeks like this."

Sam blinks, and is absurdly, bizarrely touched.

"There's got to be a hose around here," he says, and Dean gives him a hopeful look. "Let me find something."

The closest hose is a block and a half away in somebody's back yard. Sam steals it and brings it back to the motel. There are faucets around the back, and Sam spends half an hour with his thumb hooked partway around the mouth of the hose to create enough water pressure to spray as much of the gunk off of Dean as possible. Dean stoically does not complain about being doused with cold water. His clothes are a total wash, so Sam returns to the room to grab something, and Dean strips off and changes into Sam's sweats right there in the parking lot.

"They're old," Sam says when he sees Dean fingering the material. "We can just throw them away. I didn't want you to ruin a whole new set of clothes."

Dean gives him a half-smile, and then rolls his eyes when Sam insists on returning the stolen hose.

When Sam gets back, Dean is working on the interior of the Impala. He hasn't showered yet, and there is dump gunk in his hair, but it makes sense to clean the car or he'll just have to shower twice. Sam's sweats are huge on Dean.

They will probably still have to drive around with the windows down for a few days. At least it’s summer.

Sam goes around to the trunk to get the cordless drill, and goes into the room.

The first couple of summonings don't work, and the Baker's are looking a little dubious, but the third does, and Sam traps the hissing cat spirit under the wire of a spell-etched and blessed canary cage with the bottom popped off. The next part takes hours, because there is chanting in Egyptian, and the containment spell requires multiple chanters, so Sam has to teach Dean and the Baker's to intone and inflect correctly in Egyptian while their dead cat spits and turns in circles and yowls in the cage. There is a certain amount of hilarity inherent in teaching a soccer mom, an accountant, a four year old, and Dean to chant in order to ritually bind the spirit of a vengeful cat.

When Sam is sure they've got it, he pulls out the vessel. It's a horribly ugly figurine of a cat. It has a hole drilled in the top of it's head, and Sam has filled it with salt and iron filings. It has a giant bow around its neck, huge, liquid eyes, and is covered in hieroglyphics.

Dean looks at him like he's out of his mind.

"The vessel has to fit the form," Sam says with a shrug.

Dean looks between the furiously hissing spirit and the figurine, eyebrows hiked up to 'unbelievable' but wisely chooses to say nothing.

"Okay, chant," Sam says.

The whole ritual takes eight minutes, which is exactly how long it should take, and when they finish chanting the cat has lost its shape and is just a little funnel of vengeance that looks like the cartoon tasmanian devil. Sam lifts the cage and finishes the spell with three short syllables, and the funnel streams a long line of smoke into the hole in the top of the cat figurines head until it vanishes entirely inside. Sam fits a carefully whittled down plug of iron into the hole and carves the hieroglyphic that means lock into it in tiny, tiny strokes. He picks up the figurine and the cage, takes it into the kitchen and puts the figurine on top of the refrigerator and then puts the cage over the figurine.

"If you break it, Smitty will get out," Sam tells them. "You have to keep it for a full lunar cycle, so twenty-eight days from right now." Mrs. Baker circles the day on the calendar in red. "Then the spirit will be fully bound to the vessel, and you can burn the whole thing. Don't just take it outside and set it on fire. Get a good fire going, put it right in the middle, and keep the fire going until there's nothing but ash. It'll make some popping sounds and flash a little. Don't worry about it, that's supposed to happen."

"Call us if something goes wrong," Dean tells them.

"How much do we owe you?" Mr. Baker asks, with all apparent sincerity.

"We don't charge for this," Dean says unexpectedly, and Mrs. Baker hugs Dean, who looks shocked, and pats her back awkwardly.

Sam thinks it's the first time it's been Dean who gets hugged by someone they've helped.

Maybe Dean is growing as a person. 

***

They find a seedy diner, and Sam doesn't object because Dean feels the same way about seedy diners that he does about dive bars. Sam speculates that, like Megadeth, seedy diners and dive bars are just what the world is supposed to look like for Dean.

Sam has french toast with strawberries and Dean has, literally, a colossal pyramid of sausage links. The waitress seems revolted and riveted when she finally accepts that Dean means to eat them all, just like that, and lurks off to one side, watching.

Dean doesn't care, of course.

He drops Sam off at the motel, and tells Sam he's going to pick up beer and salt and bullets and maybe take the Impala to a proper car wash. The car barely smells at all on the inside, and was washed on the outside not long ago by Dean himself, but Sam guesses Dean still feels a little dirty from the dump, and feels that the Impala must feel the same way by association. Dean's anthropomorphizing of his car is legendary, and will brook no argument. It's weirdly charming.

He asks Sam if he wants anything; Sam says he's good.

He does a little cursory research while Dean is gone, and composes a short e-mail to Bobby about Egyptian binding rituals working on animal spirits, but then gets restless and plays Bejeweled on Dean's account for a while.

He's waiting for Dean to come back, knows exactly why, and the connection between having sex with Dean and finishing a job isn't even something that he needs to think about. There hasn't been enough time to establish it as routine, but it will be.

It's a couple of hours -- Sam is starting to get a little cranky and a little worried, by turns -- and Dean hesitates in the doorway for a weird second. Then he comes in and almost-casually drops a Best Buy bag into Sam's lap and crams all the other bags onto the table. Sam cranes his neck to look at Dean for a few seconds, but Dean is occupied with the other bags, so Sam opens his bag.

It's an iPod. And little iPod speakers. Sam stares at them.

"I don't know about the sound quality on those, but your laptop is crap, so..." Dean says, and takes several canisters of salt out of the bags and lines them up on the back edge of the table. "and they had a fancier one with a touch screen, but with all the action we see..." Dean pulls out a six pack of bottles and sets it in front of the line of salt canisters. "Of course, if you don't load some Black Sabbath on it, I'll salt and burn it," Dean finishes. He's lining up boxes of bullets now, flanking the beer on both sides. It looks like he's setting up a battlefield with salt cavalry and bullet infantry and beer generals.

Sam puts the iPod and speakers back into the bag and puts it on the floor by his chair. Dean's hands hesitate, and then continue to lay out boxes of bullets. Sam stands up and puts his laptop on the seat of the chair. Dean's hands hesitate again, and this time he turns to look at Sam. His face is carefully neutral, and Sam wants nothing so much as he wants to drag Dean to the bed and fuck him stupid, or let Dean fuck him, or suck Dean's cock, or _anything_ really, just anything so he can have Dean, so Dean can have Sam, but the blank expression, the deliberateness of it, stops him.

There is something wrong here.

It's not the first time Sam has thought so, but it's the first time since that first time, and he hasn't thought about it since. He's given some thought to other things, but not that. Because if that first time was wrong, everything since has been wrong, too, by association, and Sam can't handle that. He doesn't want to know that.

"I need another shower," Dean says. "I still smell like the fucking dump."

But Dean doesn't brush past Sam and head to the bathroom. He just stands there, like he's waiting for something, and that's wrong, too.

"Okay," Sam agrees helplessly, though Dean doesn't smell like the dump, not really. Dean does brush by Sam, then, except he turns his body carefully so as not to actually touch Sam as he passes, and that is wrong, too.

_Oh, Jesus,_ Sam thinks, terrified, and sinks down onto the edge of Dean's bed with his head in his hands.

If Dean holds true to form, Sam has between five and nine minutes to figure out what's going on.

He can't think, though. He's terrified, and he's spent most of the last several weeks determinedly not thinking about this one thing, using all of his brain to think about everything but this, and he is scrambling for that methodical, analytical part of his brain that he uses when they hunt, to compile information into something useful, and he just can't get a grasp on it. He stands up and looks at Dean's beer, bullet and salt battlefield, looks at his laptop, the bag with the iPod in it, the bed behind him, and all he can hold in his head is the certainty that he is missing something important, something necessary, and if he can't figure out what it is, he will damage this thing that the two of them both want so badly.

Maybe he will damage it right out of existence, and he thinks of Dean's blank face, and the way Dean's calm had cracked open that first time, and the way Dean had looked at him when he had Sam on his knees, the hunger that Sam understands because he feels the same way, he and Dean are the same that way, and then he thinks of the way Dean kissed his forehead and crushed Sam against him, only for a few seconds, but still shockingly intimate for Dean, who has willingly hugged Sam exactly twice in the last year and a half, both times after Sam or Dean or both had nearly died.

Dean has done that twice since they started this thing, Sam can almost still feel the impression of Dean's mouth on his forehead and the top of his head, and Sam hasn't done it at all, actually, even though he has wanted to forever, has wanted to touch Dean like that, with love, without having to conceal that he wants to do it. Sam hadn't even managed to reciprocate either time. Sam had just sat there and let it happen.

Dean, perhaps inevitably, does not give Sam his five to nine minutes. He comes out of the bathroom after what can't be more than two minutes, with a towel around his waist, still dripping wet. Sam can still hear the shower running, like Dean couldn't afford the two seconds it would have taken to turn it off. There is soap clinging to the top of Dean's right ear.

"Sam," he says seriously, and Sam says,

"Shut up!" with far more fury than he even knew he felt. Dean's eyebrows shoot upward, and Sam adds, "I'm having a goddamned epiphany here, and you can just shut up and wait until I'm done."

Sam turns toward the table and props his hands on the top so that he can't see Dean dripping on the carpet with the too-small motel towel around his waist.

He thinks about Dean's face, calm the first time, expectant the second time, calm the third time, certain the fourth time, but all of those times, every time, somewhere in the middle Dean had gone hot and glassy-eyed and needful. Sam is certain he had done the same, except. Except never on purpose, Sam has not been hiding anything on purpose, and Dean is, he definitely is, and if Sam knew _what_ he might be able to...

Sam looks over his shoulder, and is totally unsurprised to see that Dean is watching him carefully, studying the line of Sam's back, and then Sam's face when he realizes Sam is looking at him.

Sam thinks about the things that Dean had done, the things he had _known_ to do, eclipsed at the time by other things that Dean had been inexperienced in, and by the sheer degree of raw need Sam had been operating under during all of those encounters.

Sam had chosen not to investigate what they were doing. He had chosen not to factor any of it in.

Maybe Dean had not.

Or, no, or maybe yes, but that doesn't matter, because Dean, Sam knows how Dean works, and he doesn't really work off paper. There is a reason that Sam does their research, that he performs their rituals, that he explains things to Dean in terms that Dean can use, because Dean is a hands-on learner. It's what makes him more physically effective than Sam, in spite of Sam's size advantage, and it's part of what makes him leap into physical encounters without consideration for the consequences, because Dean knows his body and trusts it. Once Dean has done a thing, he can be relied upon to be able to do it again with easy physical and even mental recall, but he has to see it done, has to put his hands on it, has to _know_ a thing in order to do it really well.

And what he had done with Sam, the way he had unraveled Sam, the set of his body, the tone of his voice, Dean had known that.

Dean has done this before.

_Oh, Jesus,_ Sam thinks again, agonized, and turns away from Dean and hangs his head and closes his eyes. Dean is obeying some unknown set of rules, which Sam has been willfully remaining ignorant of.

It's a problem, a real issue, and he needs to order his thoughts and decide how to handle it, but he is totally, completely consumed by the idea of this hypothetical person, who she had been, what she had been to Dean, and Sam hates her, he is jealous for the first time ever, because he knows Dean, he _knows_ , and this is, it's a big deal, and Dean would never do this with someone who didn't matter, like all the women Dean sleeps with don't matter, have never mattered.

_Oh, Jesus,_ Sam thinks yet again, because they are going to have to talk about this. There is no way out of it, no other way, and Dean fucking hates shit like this.

He turns around to say, _Okay, we have to talk,_ or possibly, Okay, tell me about the rules, or something else explicitly conversation starting, prepared to drag Dean kicking and screaming into it, but he doesn't say anything. Dean's shoulders are hunched, and he's looking fixedly at the Best Buy bag beside Sam's chair, and his whole face is crumpled with miserable resignation, as though he already knows what's going to happen, hates it, and can see no way clear of it.

Sam closes his mouth without using it, throat clenched with what feels like grief. His hands curl into fists and his chest is tight and his eyes are burning, and Sam will not give this up, he can't, he _won't_.

Fuck that. He's never going to do that. And fuck talking about it. It doesn't matter that he doesn't fully understand it. It matters that that look on Dean's face is un-fucking-acceptable, and Sam will not allow it.

He turns and leans his ass back against the table and hopes to God he is at least projecting a reasonable facsimile of what he's aiming at when he says, "Come here, Dean."

Dean whole body snaps around to face him, and if the look on Dean's face -- his eyes are huge, and his mouth has actually dropped a little open with surprise -- hadn't been precisely what Sam was going for, he'll still take it over the alternative.

Possessed with some kind of half-hysterical hilarity, Sam echoes, in a deliberate approximation of Dean's tone and inflection, "Come on over here."

Unlike Sam, Dean doesn't have to be coaxed. His eyes are still huge, and he looks uncertain as well as surprised, now, but he walks right up to Sam without hesitation, tipping his chin up to meet Sam's eyes. He's searching Sam's face again; Sam can almost see Dean scrambling for balance, like he doesn't know the right response to this, and wants to badly.

And Sam's plan had been to replay the prior scenario in reverse, really. It's an emergency plan, but one he at least knows what looks like when it's done right, and his only real goal is to make this into sex _right now_ , without talking about it, but not without giving Dean a choice. To make the offer obvious, but not in a way that would force Dean to say no out loud, if Dean doesn't want it.

So he isn't sure what happens when he reaches for Dean. He means to put his hand on Dean's shoulder, he means to play this as Dean himself had previously scripted it, but what he does instead is touch Dean's mouth with the pad of his thumb.

For a moment, Dean's eyes go even wider, and then his whole face shifts into stillness. Not the careful blank expression, not a shield, but just stillness. Calm.

Dean looks almost exactly like he had the first time Sam had fucked him, actually. Like he is just waiting to find out what will happen. His shoulders have relaxed as well. Fearless.

Sam reaches for Dean's towel with his other hand -- he is unwilling to remove his thumb from the soft swell of Dean's lips, and feels as though he may never again be willing to do so -- and he doesn't even have to pull. As soon as he curls his fingers into it, Dean lets it go. Sam uses it to wipe the soap away from the top of Dean's ear, and drops it to the floor carelessly.

Dean's face is still, but his eyes are nearly luminous. Sam looks down between them, and Dean's cock is hard and flushed and already weeping. When he looks up again, Dean is blushing faintly. Sam brushes his thumb along the curve of Dean's bottom lip, and the blush deepens, and he lets out a short, almost soundless rush of breath. Sam leaves his thumb where it is, resting at the corner of Dean's mouth and tries very hard to think about what he's doing.

He has no notable success.

He realizes that he'd yelled at Dean to shut up earlier, and that he's basically shushed Dean with Sam's thumb against his lips, and he doesn't want Dean to think that had been an _order_ , so he says, "You can talk."

Not expecting Dean to talk at all, of course.

So it's a surprise when Dean says, quietly, gently, "You got any idea what you're doing here, Sam?" In spite of the careful way he says it, his voice is not without amusement.

Some tight place in Sam relaxes, though he couldn't say where, exactly. It feels like all over. "Not at all," he says honestly, and it comes out just as low, but far less careful than Dean's voice had. Sam's voice sounds drawling, almost languid. "Whatever I want," he adds thoughtlessly, and Dean's eyes widen faintly.

And that. That. Sam recognizes that.

Sam thumbs deliberately at Dean's bottom lip, and Dean's eyes flicker uncertainly for an instant, and then he opens his mouth. Sam slides his thumb past Dean's lips and across the wet velvet of his tongue, and Dean's eyes slide closed. It's easy. Dean's lips curl around Sam's thumb, and his brows draw faintly down, but he doesn't do anything.

"Suck," Sam says, and Dean's cheeks hollow, his head tips a bit, his tongue curls warm around Sam's thumb, dragging along the pad. It feels like Sam has nerve endings that run directly between his thumb and his nuts, and he hears himself make a deep, breathy sound.

Dean's eyes open, and they are dark and dazed, missing something that makes Sam pause for a long moment, staring at Dean and groping for whatever it is, worried, until it comes to him that it's tension, that he has seen Dean look like this before, just not this soon, never until after Sam was fucking him.

The correlation makes Sam groan softly and curl his free hand around Dean's upper arm, and Dean doesn't make a sound, but he sucks hard at Sam's thumb and sways on his feet a little. Sam looks down and sees Dean's cock jerking. There is a shiny wet spatter across the toe of Sam's shoe.

"I love that you do that," Sam breathes thickly. "Get so wet like that." Dean's cock jerks as if in response, and the little wet spot on Sam's shoe gets a little bigger. Sam looks up, and Dean is looking at him hungrily, something vast in his eyes, something hopeful that Sam desperately wants to be able to answer.

He pulls his thumb away from Dean's mouth with a slick, obscene noise, and drags it across his cheek, leaving a wet trail. Dean inhales raggedly, and Sam slides his wet thumb along Dean's nipple. Dean's breath sticks in his throat for a second, then spills out only a little unsteadily. Sam catches the same nipple between thumb and forefinger and doesn't bother to be gentle about it. Dean's breath sticks again, but this time his head falls back, too, like the tendons in the back of his neck have been cut, and his eyes slam shut, and he flushes hot all the way down his throat. Sam does not let go, and Dean's mouth falls open, and after what has to be ten or more seconds, he sucks in a harsh breath, chokes it out, sucks in another, and he still doesn't make a sound, not a real sound. Only the strained sounds of his breathing. "I don't ever want to know who told you that you had to be quiet," Sam says, leaning in to murmur directly into Dean's ear, "but it wasn't _me_ , Dean."

Dean apparently has to process that, or he is that deeply conditioned, Sam doesn't know, he just knows it's another long span of at least ten seconds of listening to Dean choke at his air, face steadily going ruddier, before Dean growls out a short, sharp sound of pain, and then immediately follows it with, "Sam!" a shout that is almost panicked.

Sam jerks Dean against his chest and kisses the top of his head; he doesn't think about it. It just happens. He can feel Dean shaking, and Sam cups the back of Dean's head, dragging his fingertips through the short scruff of his hair. "That was good," he says, and kisses the top of Dean's head again, more slowly this time, so he can consider the prickle of Dean's hair against his lips and the leafy scent of Dean's shampoo. "You were good."

Conditioned, then. The way Dean settles immediately is just affirmation. He doesn't resist when Sam draws back, and he looks calm again, but some of the raw need has gone back into hiding. Sam can't see any uncertainty there, though. Nothing like fear, not that there ever would be. The nipple Sam had pinched is deeply red, and Sam bends to lick at it almost without thought. Dean sucks in a sharp breath, and breathes out, "Sam," quietly this time, something that is not quite a moan, but is near enough that Sam will take it.

Sam straightens and Dean is looking dazedly at him, like Sam is something entirely new Dean had discovered while he was minding his own business, expecting nothing of the sort. Sam wants to smile stupidly in response, and manages to resist undermining all his efforts thus far by doing so.

Dean says, "Sam," again, this time in a voice that hovers somewhere between a question and a statement, and Sam barely has time to arch his brows curiously before Dean has both hands in Sam's hair and is dragging him down. Sam's body seems to know what's going on before Sam's brain is engaged, because his mouth is already open when Dean's crashes into it, he is already sliding his tongue between Dean's lips and tasting toothpaste and crushing Dean against him with both arms. Dean makes a sound, he, Christ, he _whines_ , almost, like he can't help it, and the vibration against Sam's lips and tongue kind of makes Sam want to hurt somebody, or cry, maybe.

Sam doesn't even know what he's doing, except that he is pretty sure he isn't kissing very well, because his lips feel bruised and aching, and his tongue keeps catching on Dean's teeth, and they are breathing so hard that Sam is shocked they don't both just pass out. 

"Dean," he pants, and for a second it seems like Dean might stop, he pulls back to blink at Sam, brows drawn together seriously, and then he makes a short, helpless sound, and doesn't even have to drag Sam back down because Sam is already bending down to him, and Dean is pulling his hair, and Sam is groaning at the way that feels, the faint pain coupled with the slick heat of Dean's tongue slipping along the roof of his mouth.

When they do pull apart, it's at the same moment, as though mutually, silently agreed upon.

Dean's mouth is wet and red and swollen and his eyes are dark with want, but most of the ease has gone out of his body. He isn't exactly tense, but he is wired about something. He's looking intently at Sam, and Sam gets a ghost of an idea of what is going on before Dean even says, "You don't have to, Sam. We don't have to. Like that."

Sam isn't sure if he wants to laugh or choke Dean or what.

"I'm not doing anything I don't want to do," Sam says flatly. Dean opens his mouth, and Sam says, "We're the same, Dean."

Dean lets out a short, sharp laugh that is totally lacking in mirth. "Yeah, no. We're really not."

Which is really, infuriatingly patronizing, but Sam is less pissed off than he normally would be, because he is sure about this. He is right. "I will do anything," he says. He waits, and when Dean finally meets his eyes, Sam holds his gaze. "Tell me you wouldn't."

Dean licks his lips, but doesn't look away. "You don't ..." But he stops talking on his own, brows drawing down into a faint frown, which is great, because it means Dean possibly has a brain, and is using it even as Sam watches, so perhaps Sam will not be forced to kill him.

"This is nothing," Sam says, low and honest. "I will do any of it. I'm smart enough to figure out what I don't know. And you can't stand there and tell me you won't do the same fucking thing. None of the rest of it matters. None of what anyone else does, and none of what you've ever done with anyone else. You and I are the same. That's enough to make it work."

Dean licks his lips again, but he doesn't look away from Sam, and Sam recognizes this as kind of a heroic effort for Dean, Dean, who hates to be vulnerable, hates to set aside his badass macho persona, hates to _need_ things. "I know you don't want to hurt me, Sam," he says, low and uncertain. "I don't want you doing things you don't want."

It skirts around the edges of the admission, or it would, if it were anyone but Dean. But it is Dean, so it is blatant.

Sam would like to shake him, but as soon as the urge hits him, he is struck with another sharp-bright instant of insight. "I'm going to hit you," he says.

Dean just looks at him, not quite disbelieving, but not quite believing either. When Sam raises his hand, Dean closes his eyes.

Sam knows exactly how hard, he and Dean have been sparring their whole lives, and he knows what Dean can take. Still, he pulls it just a little, he doesn't want Dean's ears ringing with it, but the open handed slap he delivers is still hard enough to drive Dean down to his knees, in part, Sam thinks, because Dean makes no attempt to deflect it, no attempt to stay on his feet. The feel of it is hot on Sam's palm, and there is a moment of silent, aching horror, but then Dean looks up at him with that look, that enormous, hopeful yearning. Sam jerks his fly open and drags his boxers down, hooking them under his balls.

"Look, Dean. Does it look to you like I don't _want_ that?" Dean does look, his gaze fixing on Sam's cock for a long, utterly silent moment. When he looks back up to Sam's face, there is less uncertainty, more hungry need, but not enough. "Get up," Sam growls, impatient now, and Dean gets jerkily to his feet without taking his eyes off of Sam's face. "I want you," Sam says through clenched teeth, "to stop giving things up for me. I don't want _that_ , and that's the only thing I don't want from you." And he slaps Dean again, a little harder this time, and Dean goes right down, this time with a low, ragged cry.

Sam follows him down, thoughtless and perfect, sliding a knee between Dean's thighs, and uses his whole body to press Dean back until he has to catch himself with both hands behind him. Sam drags his cock along Dean's hip, smearing Dean's skin with precome, and Dean stares up at Sam. There is a little trickle of blood at the corner of Dean's lower lip, and his eyes are huge and dark. "Sammy," he says helplessly. "Sam."

"You should see how you look," Sam says hoarsely, feeling a little insane just looking at Dean with his face wide open, his whole body bowed back and on offer to Sam. Dean has never looked more naked, and Sam wants that so badly he can barely think with it raging in his brain and tearing through his skin. "I want to make you look like this. I will do anything to make you look like this. We're the same, you and me, and I'm never going to believe that's not how it is. I'm never going to, Dean, and when you had me on my knees, sucking your cock, I felt crazy, I felt like I could _die_ from it I wanted it so much. Tell me that was something you didn't want from me, Dean. Tell me that was in some way bad for you."

"No," Dean says, slow and stuttery, and reaches up to touch Sam's face, fingertips skating along Sam's jaw and then his cheekbone. "No, Sammy, you, God, no... you were so pretty, so fucking pretty, I..."

"I know, listen to yourself, this is _the same_." He shifts his hips so he can drag his cock right alongside Dean's this time, smearing Dean's precome all along the length of himself, and Dean shudders hard. "This is not something I don't want. I want this so bad I can't fucking see straight," Sam confesses in a low snarl, and Dean gasps in a breath, and then another, and Sam licks at the blood on Dean's mouth instinctually, the warm copper tang of it so familiar. Sam has been tasting his own blood in his mouth every few days for his whole fucking life, and Dean's doesn't taste any different.

Dean goes still, and Sam looks at him. He licks his lips with Dean's blood still hot on his tongue, and Dean breaks open for him, everything right there on his face, all aching want and absolute acceptance. "Please, Sammy," he says. "Sam."

He kisses Dean again, this time with intent, with an agenda, and Dean just opens his mouth and lets it happen, lets Sam rock his head back and bite at his mouth until Sam has to lever an arm under Dean's shoulders to help hold him up, and when Sam drags his teeth hard across Dean's jaw and down his throat, Dean groans out loud and his whole body shakes with it, as though it's a sound that Dean has been wanting to make, needing to make, his whole fucking life.

"Gonna have you like this," Sam moans against Dean's throat. He can feel Dean's pulse against his lips, and it feels like his mind is slipping a little further away with each hammering beat of it. "Just like this, don't you move, Dean."

Dean falls forward a little when Sam stands up, braces himself on one hand, and he watches while Sam tears at his clothes with unconcealed avarice. Sam doesn't have to look for the lube. He had been expecting sex, if not quite like this, and it's sitting on the table between the two beds. He has to step over Dean's legs to get to it, and he comes back behind Dean and folds his longer body around, his thighs on the outsides of Dean's, and pushes his face into the curve of Dean's neck. Dean leans back into him without any kind of uncertainty or reluctance, and Sam wants that so much that he is almost blind with it, almost deaf and mute, like he has no perception of the world that doesn't reflect the way it feels to have Dean touching him so easily, so willingly.

He slicks his fingers clumsily, stupid with lust, but it doesn't matter because Dean doesn't even let Sam work one finger all the way in before he is shoving back against Sam's hand, breathing in harsh, whooping breaths, trapping Sam's hand between them. Sam, searingly aware of the parallel, murmurs, "I need you to be still for me, Dean," and Dean chokes out something nonsensical, just a string of syllables that don't hang together, but it doesn't matter because it's completely uncensored, and mind-wipingly arousing.

Sam shifts to get some room between them again, and Dean is still for the first finger, shuddering by the time Sam works in a second, and Sam has never before been tempted not to bother with a third finger, and maybe, God, maybe when Dean is used to taking Sam's cock on a regular basis, he could, he might, oh Jesus, because Dean is jerking out hot little noises, just "Ah, ah, ah," like all he ever needed was for someone to tell him he could. They are making Sam want to scream, every one of them crashing into Sam's eardrums with a jarring pulse of want, and just knowing that Dean would want that, Sam shoving into him without stretching him well enough, that Dean would probably fucking _love_ that, makes it exponentially harder not to want it. The only thing stopping him is the half-grasped understanding that he also has to take _care_ of Dean, that Sam is also _responsible_ for Dean's safety and not just Dean's pleasure, so he adds a little more lube and works another finger into Dean as thoroughly as he can, until Dean's wordless little cries turn into Sam's name, so frantic that it is nearly stripped of meaning, as though Dean doesn't even know any other words.

And then Sam can't wait, he slings an arm around Dean's chest and lifts him up, but leaves him just like he is, thighs tucked in between Sam's, because it will be tighter that way, Dean will feel it more, and Dean twists and yells out wordlessly when Sam pushes inside, and then another noise, deeper and wetter, when Sam pulls out and does it again. Dean's head falls back onto Sam's shoulder, mouth open soundlessly, eyes glassy and sightless, and Sam holds them both still because he knows, he can tell, can feel in Dean's whole body how close to coming he is, and Sam wants to be inside for that, he wants to have his hand around Dean's cock, Sam wants everything this time, he has to have it.

"Dean, can you wait?" Sam rasps, feeling Dean's stubble against his lips, a bright drag of sensation. "Can you do that?"

Dean makes a harsh sound that results directly in Sam arching his hips into a brief, hard arc and Dean twisting against him, something that is nothing like a struggle, but feels a little like one anyway. Sam bites Dean's jaw, can't resist it, and Dean gasps out, "Try, Sam... never... good at--" and Sam bites him much harder so Dean shouts a little in surprise and pain, because Sam does not want to know, he...

"Never tell me," he hears himself growling, and he is pressing up, in, slow as he can, but God, maybe harder than he should, and Dean is whining, low and rough, and Sam is still talking, isn't sure what he's saying, recovers himself just in time to hear himself snarl, "I hate it, I hate her, I hate that anyone but me has ever had you like this, I will kill anyone that touches you, I--"

"Sam!" Dean howls, and jerks so hard that Sam has to hold on hard to keep Dean upright, and Sam doesn't have to see it, he can feel the way Dean hunches against Sam's arm, wracked with shuddering tension, feel Dean's body wrenching around roughly half of Sam's cock, and Sam bites down on his own lip to stop himself from coming as well, and not because of how Dean feels, which is so good Sam wants to howl himself, but because Dean shouting Sam's name while he comes is too, is so... so huge and so right and so fucking _crucial_ that Sam almost can't stop it.

Dean goes limp and heavy, and momentarily loose enough that the rest of Sam's cock pushes right up inside him, not exactly easily, but quick and dragging bright-hot with pleasure. "Oh, that's," Sam breathes, eyelids sagging closed, "so good, you are," and Dean breathes out softly, a sweet little sigh, and curls his hands around the arm Sam has across Dean's chest, and Sam manages to finish, "perfect, God, perfect for me. Dean."

"Nobody ever," Dean says, so slurred and sprawling that he sounds drunk. He tips his head back against Sam's shoulder, eyes closed, face still flushed, mouth bitten and red. There is a slow bruise coming up along the line of his jaw. "Like this, Sammy," he says. "Just you."

It is some kind of inward hook, a white splinter of something raw in Sam's brain, a thing he has never before felt or suspected, a cliff unexpectedly yawning there, and control over his body is all twisted up in it, entangled and fixed, and he shoves up into Dean hard in response to it. Dean lets out a bitten off cry, and Sam does it again, again, again, the friction-sweet burn of Dean around him is enormous, the way he sounds, the moment it slants for Dean, Sam knows it, feels it, may never understand what it means to feel it himself, but he can already identify the knot of it in Dean's voice, the pleasure-pain, the taut need of Dean's body. When Sam drops his arm and pushes, Dean goes right down, tucked over his own thighs without protest, easy flexibility that changes everything about the angle and Sam shouts and gets his knees under him and shoves both hands against Dean's back to hold him there, right there where he is perfect and Sam can barely stand it, and he has never, Sam has never been that guy, never had to have like that, like this, but he is grinding out, "Always me, always, Dean, never, you never, you, no one," and Dean is moaning, crushed and breathless, a sound that should be senseless, but is not, is heavy with acceptance and agreement and consent. 

Sam closes his eyes and comes so hard that he loses time, loses all sense of everything, and when the obliteratingly sweet ache of it passes, he is curled over Dean's back, his hands clenched punishingly into both of Dean's biceps, his throat is raw, and he is so hot he's sticking to Dean's skin everywhere they are pressed together. Beneath him, Dean is shivering loosely, somehow, he is lax, but still quivering. Sam pulls out carefully, and looks down just long enough to be sure there is no blood on his cock.

Dean splays when Sam rolls him over, arms and legs every which way. His thighs and belly are both smeared with come, and his cock is hard again, or still, it doesn't matter. He is looking at Sam like he is God.

Sam has never seen anyone look so wanton and so, so thoroughly debauched. There are bite marks on Dean's neck and his shoulders, only some of which Sam remembers setting into his skin, there is one right at the top of his jaw, laid across the place where he will be bruised tomorrow, and his eyes are sultry and wicked. His skin is slick and hot, his mouth bitten and wet, and the whole, stunning length of his body is like a provocation toward depravity, like Dean was made for this, like he has no other purpose.

"When I," Sam says, voice as raw as his throat feels, "when you sucked me, I was still for you, you asked and it felt like I couldn't, even if I wanted, like I just lost all, all _capacity_ for movement. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Yes," Dean says, whisper soft.

"Can you do that?"

"Yes," Dean repeats, all open and sweet and tempting.

"Do that," Sam says, and doesn't wait. He just sprawls next to Dean and licks his thighs, his belly, his cock, licks him clean until he's slick with Sam's spit from thighs to nipples, and then Dean's cock until Dean is shivering, and Dean gets so wet, he leaks so much that Sam could occupy an afternoon this way, he could spend as long as he might want to making Dean shiver and lapping at the sweetish flow as it drips into his navel. He doesn't, now, though. "You were so good, Dean," he says, looking up to watch Dean's face when he says it, so he will know the way Dean flushes and inhales hard, and how he looks back, willingly exposed.

He shifts to take Dean's cock in his mouth, and Dean sighs out something vaguely encouraging, but is otherwise just how Sam wants him, loose and easy, as though he has fallen just like this. Dean doesn't shift or even tense when Sam slides two fingers into him, but he makes a low, eager sound. Sam imagines how raw Dean must be, how it must burn like falling on concrete and rashing the palms of your hands. Sam knows, has known, has actually experienced several times the way that Dean reacts to pain, Sam _gets_ it, but this time, like this, with Dean's voice moaning low and wanting, but not urgent, his own belly twists a little with uncertain craving, and he pushes another finger into the hot, tight grip of Dean's body, and swallows when Dean comes without twitching.

Sam is half hard again, but he ignores it. Dean looks like he might pass out right there on the floor.

He's cooperative when Sam cajoles him to his feet, though, staggers gamely over to the bed and lets Sam navigate him between the sheets. Sam kisses him, and is surprised that he is surprised when Dean makes no effort to resist. Dean kisses back lazily, a little sloppily, one hand curled around the back of Sam's neck, and sometime two or three minutes in Sam realizes with a little thrill that they are making out. Kissing just to be kissing, because kissing is nice. Eventually, as Dean's kisses become increasingly drowsy, Sam pulls back. He's been half-crouched next to Dean's bed for several minutes, and straightening up aches a little along muscles already sore with exertion.

Sam goes into the bathroom and turns off the shower. He cleans himself up hastily. The water is ice cold, of course, which banishes what was left of his semi, which Sam guesses is good. He brushes his teeth. In the mirror, he looks the same.

He takes a washcloth out and Dean is snoring, sprawled on his belly, just as Sam had left him. He doesn't wake when Sam checks his hole, which is raw-red and swollen, but not actually torn. He slides the washcloth across it gently, and Dean jerks awake with a terribly unflattering snort.

"Motherfucker, that is _cold_!" he cries, glaring over his shoulder at Sam as though betrayed. "What the hell are you doin'?"

Sam resists the urge to laugh. He resists desperately. "I'm making sure you aren't hurt, and cleaning you up. Trust me, you'll be glad in the morning."

Dean blinks at him, some of the indignation retreating. "Hey, I'm okay, Sam."

Sam nods. "You look fine, a little raw maybe, but I don't see anything worse than abrasions."

Dean's brows draw together expressively. "Sam," he says.

"Dean," Sam says back, flatly. "This is not guilt, I promise. This is practicality. I'm big, and you're inexperienced. This isn't the first time I've taken care of you after. It's just the first time you've woken up for it."

Dean's face clears. Then he smiles a little dopily. "Oh," he says softly. Then he scowls. "Why the hell does it have to be so cold?" 

Sam rolls his eyes. "Because you left the shower running, and there's no hot water," he says wryly.

"Oh," Dean says.

Sam smiles. "Go back to sleep."

Dean gives him a brief, cursory once over. "You gonna sleep?"

Sam shrugs. "I'm still a little wired. I'll sleep in a while."

That seems to satisfy Dean. He rolls over, and is snoring again as soon as Sam finishes cleaning him up.

Sam sits up for a while playing Bejeweled on his laptop with the sound off. He gets a new high score on Dean's account.

He opens his new iPod and loads it with music. It's got enough memory to hold every song he has, which is awesome. He takes an inordinate amount of pleasure scrolling through the sixteen songs on Dean's playlist.

He gives himself every opportunity to brood, agonize, or otherwise obsess, but it doesn't happen, and he is happy, and not surprised.

He goes to bed feeling grateful.


	6. 6

Sam wakes up because Dean is dragging his boxers down his thighs.

"I want you to stop sleeping in underwear," Dean says. His tone is almost inflectionless, and yet somehow still miffed.

Sam shivers at it, and also chuckles sleepily. He's lying half on his side, half on his belly, one leg tucked up, and Dean is pressed up against him as close as a shadow. Dean's bare right knee is tucked into the hollow behind Sam's bare right knee. Dean has a hand on the back of Sam's shoulder, and is holding him still with almost no pressure.

For the first time, it is dark outside and dark in the motel room. There is some light from the fluorescent lights in the parking lot, but it is faint and inconsequential. Sam senses, rather than deduces, that this is deliberate on Dean's part. He is drowsily curious, but so relaxed he doesn't wonder that hard about it.

As before, Dean drags his boxers down to mid-thigh and abandons them there. He leaves his other hand on the back of Sam's shoulder, but with his free hand, he begins a feather-light exploration of the front of Sam's body, a slow and methodical survey conducted with fingertips and the heel of his palm. It is somehow a surprise, this easy, gentle slide of callused skin against Sam's ribs, his throat, the outside of his uppermost thigh, the one hipbone that Dean can easily reach, the slight catch of Dean's rough fingertips dragging along Sam's nipples. It is unmistakably sexual, but is also so relaxed and undemanding that Sam near-dozes through parts of it, in skips and slants, and Dean doesn't seem to mind. Sam doesn't really wake all the way up until Dean's hand slides deliberately down to just below Sam's navel and comes to rest there, exerting enough pressure that Sam's ass is pressed tight against Dean's groin, and Sam is abruptly aware of Dean's naked, already-wet cock pressed along the curve of his ass.

Sam's cock jerks immediately from half-hard to oh-my-God-please in the space of two seconds. His body bows without instruction, pressing back hard, and Dean lets out a rough sound against the nape of Sam's neck.

"I want to talk about this, Sammy," Dean says quietly and obviously sincere.

"What?" Sam asks disbelievingly, and only realizes that it's kind of insulting after he's already said it.

He feels Dean's lips curl into a smile against his neck, though, so it's okay. "Yeah, I know," Dean says wryly.

"Christo," Sam says, and Dean pinches him lightly.

"I'm not talking about my feelings," Dean warns, but he nuzzles Sam just behind his ear, and Sam thinks that in Dean-world, that gesture may very well be the equivalent of Dean talking about his feelings. The idea makes Sam's chest ache in a way that is both good and bad at once.

"Okay," Sam says.

"You said you'd let me know when you wanted to discuss it," Dean says carefully, neutrally. 

Dean is still holding him, one hand lightly splayed on the back of Sam's shoulder. Sam would reach for him if he could, but he thinks that's part of the reason Dean's hand is there.

"I was stupid and scared," Sam admits truthfully.

"And now?" Dean asks.

"Now I may still be stupid, but I'm not scared," Sam says wryly.

Dean kisses the side of Sam's neck, a warm press of dry lips. It is so uncharacteristically gentle and poignant that Sam sighs and relaxes. "What do you want to know?" Sam asks.

When Dean answers, his voice is deeper, tighter. "I want to know what does it for you, Sam. I need to know what you know about it."

"I," Sam begins, and then closes his mouth. He tries to think about it, really think, and give Dean some kind of sensible answer, but he can only summon flashes of memory, the hot slide of his cock into Dean, the way it felt to have Dean press him down to his knees, the liquid-electric feel of being lax and motionless while Dean sucked his cock, the sound of Dean's throat breaking with his cries. "Everything," he says hoarsely. "All of it does it for me."

Dean doesn't say anything for a few seconds, and then he bites Sam gently, teeth scraping all the way down the length of the big tendon in Sam's neck. Sam shudders silently, unbreathing, and Dean whispers, "I know that. I get that." A pause, and then, "Me too. But that's not what I mean."

"I don't know what you mean," Sam says, and while that is true, he does have some idea of what Dean is actually asking.

"I know," Dean says. "and you don't want me to tell you."

It's a question. "No. I... whatever rules you think you should be following. They don't mean anything to me. I don't want them."

"Okay," Dean murmurs. "Okay, Sam."

But Sam can hear the uncertainty in Dean's voice, veiled, but there, and Dean may not want to talk about his feelings, but Sam has no problem talking about his own. "They don't fit us anyway," he tells Dean. "They're just camouflage, like the fake badges and the suits and the bullshit cover stories we use to hide why we're really there from people who couldn't understand even if we told them. I don't want to hide like that from you. I won't let you hide like that from me. You have to let that go. It might work in the real world, but we don't fit the real world, either, Dean. We fit _here._ " 

Dean says nothing for so long that Sam starts to feel fidgety and worried. Dean, as though sensing it, strokes the hand on Sam's belly all the way up his chest, soothing him.

"I gotta think about that, Sammy," Dean says, almost apologetically.

"That's okay," Sam says, because he gets it. He's done his own share of thinking already, and it will probably be harder for Dean, who will have to untangle thought patterns he's had in place for a long time.

He's still surprised when Dean rolls backward off the bed, however.

"Hey!" Sam squawks indignantly.

"I gotta think," Dean says, still apologetic, though he sounds amused, too. "And I'm not gonna be able to do it with your ass pressed up against my cock."

"Cocktease," Sam grumbles.

Dean laughs. "Go back to sleep, Sammy. It's the middle of the night."

"Fucker," Sam says, but he doesn't actually object. "Jerk."

"Bitch," Dean says, and thumbs a lock of hair out of Sam's face. 

***

Sam wakes up before Dean, which doesn't really surprise him. Dean doesn't have the same need to order and re-order his thoughts the way that Sam does, but when he gets hooked on an idea, he's like a terrier. Sam doesn't know how long Dean had been up thinking after Sam had fallen, with unexpected ease, back to sleep, but he guesses it was a while.

There is hot water for a shower, for which Sam is grateful, and he cleans up and dresses as quietly as he can, and steals the Impala's keys and gets breakfast for both of them. He stops at Best Buy and finds the sturdiest case he can for his iPod, because Dean is right: They see a lot of action. He also buys two extra sets of earbuds and a car charger. And then he buys every CD that Dean has on cassette that he can remember off the top of his head. Then he thinks about Dean in the passenger seat, unable to sleep without the way the world is supposed to sound, and buys Dean his own iPod and sturdy case. Then he leaves before he can buy anything _really_ crazy. 

He swings into the car, tucked behind the wheel of the Impala, and is struck by the realization that he can't remember ever being happier than he is right now, in this exact moment. It hits him hard, and sends a brief arc of guilt and pain and the pale line of Jess's profile as she had looked when she was asleep washing through his mind, but it passes. In the aftermath of it, he feels no regret, and maybe that is awful, but he's relieved by it.

He stops at a convenience store and buys five tubes of lube with gleeful embarrassment. The girl behind the counter smirks at him, and Sam grins back. "Good luck!" she calls out after him.

Dean is still sleeping when Sam gets back to the room.

Sam eats his breakfast one handed while he wrangles iTunes into letting him set up a second account, and then rips Dean's CD's, and then loads it all onto Dean's new iPod. He names Dean's iPod Impalapod, fully aware that it's ridiculous, but totally unable to stop himself. He doesn't load any of his own stuff on it, not even the songs Dean had liked. This is something just for Dean, and Sam doesn't put anything on it except those things that Dean has chosen for himself.

In a moment of pure evil spite, Sam lines up the tubes of lube with Dean's salt-bullet-and-beer army, all out in front like scouts. 

When Dean is still asleep after Sam is starting to get bored, Sam tiptoes over to Dean's bedside and carefully, stealthily works the big knife out from under Dean's pillow millimeter by millimeter. He puts it on the table between the beds, still easily in reach, and then gives into the temptation to jump onto Dean's bed on his hands and knees, straddling Dean, who is curled onto one side.

Dean jerks awake, flailing, and Sam shoves him over onto his back. Dean stares at him blearily, pillow creases set into one side of his face. The bruise along his jaw is purple and vivid, and does something unexpectedly dark to what had been a fairly straight-forward desire to blow Dean.

"As long as you stay on your back," Sam says, "you can do anything you want."

Dean nods, still only half-awake, and Sam goes down on him all at once. Dean isn't even hard yet, which is somehow amazing, the length of him fitting neat and perfect in Sam's mouth, followed by the stretch of skin and heavy press of heat and weight as Dean hardens. Dean huffs out a sound of surprise partly ringed by a sickle of a moan.

Sam only half-remembers the mechanics involved the last time he had sucked Dean's cock. It's smeared in his memory, not dull, but shrouded by the way it had felt dragged out of him, as though Sam had been caught in a mental undertow at the time. He only knows that he hadn't had the presence of mind to do any of the things that he _can_ do, and he wants to show Dean all of them. 

And for a few seconds, maybe as many as thirty, it stays like that, a deliberate and coordinated demonstration, Sam using his tongue and teeth and measured suction to find out what makes Dean gasp or moan, and Sam can almost think about it without combusting until the first time Dean's cock bumps against the back of his throat. Sam lets out a brief choked noise, but the choking noise that Dean makes is tangled up with a ragged groan. Sam glances up at him through the fall of his bangs, and sees Dean looking back, gaze fixed on the stretch of Sam's mouth like he will never stop looking at it if he has any choice. Dean's hips are rocking very slightly, more a hint of movement than anything else, though Sam is not holding his hips. Sam has both hands braced on the mattress on either side of Dean, and Dean's hands are hooked firmly into the bedsheets.

Sam pulls back, because it's obvious that he hadn't been clear enough.

"Anything you want," Sam says, making sure to catch Dean's gaze while he says it.

Dean stares back for a moment, and Sam sees him suck in a breath. Dean's fists untangle themselves from the sheets, and he curls up enough to tangle them into Sam's hair instead, and Sam lets Dean pull him back down onto Dean's cock. His hips jerk up almost immediately, and Sam shifts just enough to be able to take it, and then Dean is fucking up into his mouth, not that deep, but hard enough to make Sam moan softly. Dean's hands curl into half-painful fists, and he breathes, "Yeah, Sammy, like that, that's so fucking good," and pulls a little harder. Sam hitches out another moan and when Dean's cock bumps against the back his throat again, he whines out a sound that is meant to be encouragement. Dean actually pulls back a little, and is still, his hands pulling at Sam's hair without letting him move at all, and then Dean takes a deep breath and pulls, down, all the way down, hips rising in time, and Sam swallows hard, moaning helplessly when Dean bottoms out.

"Goddamn," Dean says faintly. "Oh, goddamn, Sammy," and Sam's mind slips again, like the last time, all intent dragged out of him, and he lets Dean do it, everything, anything. Dean cups the back of Sam's head and rolls his hips in tiny motions, keeping his cock shoved firmly up into Sam's throat, and is growling, "Like that, just like that for me, Sam, take it all like that, so good, so pretty on my cock, fucking Christ, I can't believe you, fucking listen to you, Sam, Sammy," and Sam curls his spine and spreads his legs wide enough to jam his own cock against Dean's leg, helpless to stop himself. "Fuck, oh fuck, Sam," Dean whispers huskily, "take it, take me," and then Dean is coming, one hand spread across the back of Sam's head to keep him from pulling off, which never crosses Sam's mind but is still unbearable somehow. Sam swallows and shudders and crushes his aching cock harder against Dean's leg until something sharp cracks apart at the base of his spine and he comes in his jeans with Dean's cock slowly softening in his mouth.

Dean drags Sam upward by his hair, and Sam scrambles willingly up. Dean rolls him over onto his back and covers Sam's body with his, yards of skin and hard muscle and angles pressing Sam down. Dean takes Sam's face in both hands, holding rather than cradling, and kisses him seriously, even roughly, without any apparent desire for Sam's cooperation, biting at Sam's lips and tongue and sliding his tongue along Sam's teeth and the sides of his tongue, exploratory and possessive and carnal, until all Sam can taste between them is the flavor of Dean's come, and Dean is just lapping at Sam's bottom lip lazily.

When Dean grins, Sam can feel the shape of it against his mouth. "Mornin', Sam," Dean says.

"It's after noon," Sam points out, his voice a little scratchy.

"No wonder I'm starving," Dean says.

"Breakfast is on the table," Sam tells him.

"I take back half the mean things I ever said about you, Sam," Dean tells him seriously, and heaves himself off of Sam to go investigate the food, unconcernedly naked.

"Jerk," Sam tells Dean's ass, smiling.

Dean discovers the lube scouts with a scandalized, "Sam!" and Sam dodges, laughing hysterically, while Dean pelts them at him. 

Sam apologizes via iPod. 

Dean says, "This is so you don't gotta have Black Sabbath on yours, isn't it?"

Sam makes the hugest most innocent eyes possible.

Dean snorts, but plays with his iPod for an hour, and then makes Sam teach him how to use iTunes.

"Impalapod!" Dean announces sometime later in sheer delight, and Sam knows from long association that Dean is so in love with the idea that he will insist forevermore that it was his own to begin with, and he will do it so long and so often that he will eventually really believe it, and Sam will never tell him any differently.

***

Bobby calls while Dean is in the shower.

"How soon can you get to Denver," he wants to know, and Sam can tell by his tone that whatever it is isn't good.

Sam fights down a few seconds of disappointment. He knows that if he and Dean stay right here for three or four more days, they will manage to make it through nearly every searingly hot thing two people can do to one another, and he wants that badly.

But he's known from the very beginning that this is how their lives work, and if he shrugs Bobby off and Dean finds out, Dean will be pissed. Not to mention, if he shrugs Bobby off and someone gets hurt, Sam will spend eternity hating himself for it.

So he says, "Eight hours, give or take. What's up?"

"Homunculi," Bobby says.

"Really?" Sam asks, suddenly far less worried about the potential lack of sex in his immediate future. "More than one?" He grabs a notepad and a pen, and begins to jot down notes.

"Homunculi," Dean says, flat-mouthed, when he comes out of the shower. Sam carefully doesn't smile at Dean's clear displeasure. It's a little funny, sure, but Sam is sympathetic. He tries to mitigate it with some interesting talk about Alchemy, because the idea of turning lead to gold is definitely something Dean will think is cool, but Dean interrupts to say, "How much trouble could a homunculi cause, really?"

"Homunculi is the plural, Dean," Sam says, knowing full well that Dean knows that, and is using it incorrectly to be an ass. "Bobby doesn't know how many, but there are definitely several, which is weird in and of itself."

"Aren't they tiny?" Dean asks crankily.

"Yes, but an army of tiny men is _still_ an army. And it isn't even so much the homunculi as it is whomever created them, and how they did it. They're supposed to be a myth, and even if they aren't, the handful of lore on them suggests that the method of creation is fairly complex."

"Black hen, human semen, first day of March on the lunar cycle, pile of dung," Dean recites, waving one hand dismissively. Sam is a little impressed. Not that he would ever tell Dean.

"Or mandrake that grows in ground ejaculated on by a hanged man--"

"Ew," Dean inserts.

"-- gathered by a black dog on a Friday morning and washed and fed with milk and honey and sometimes blood," Sam finishes. "Either way, a complicated process. And you forgot the virgin parchment in your method."

"Yeah, it's not like I'm mixing one up here, Sam," Dean grumbles.

Sam sighs. "I'm just pointing out the difficulty involved in creating just one of them, let alone several. Even hunters think they're a myth," he says.

Dean's face scrunches into the equivalent of a small, cranky child's wrath. "Everything's a myth," he mutters, and stomps over to his bag and drops his towel to riffle through it for clean jeans and a t-shirt. 

Sam stares at his ass.

Dean turns back with his mouth open, catches Sam staring, and grins instead of bitching some more.

Sam decides to call that a win.


	7. 7

They're on their way to Denver, Dean driving, before Sam finds out what Dean had been going to say back in the motel.

"So what are the homunculi doin'? Where do we come in?" Dean throws a glance over at Sam that looks a little sheepish.

Sam carefully pretends not to notice.

"They're getting into people's homes by dressing like little kids, and hurting them," Sam says.

Dean throws a sharp look over at Sam. "Hurting them how?"

Sam tips his head back and considers a highway sign until it passes. "Bobby said that the reports varied," he says. "But I looked up some of them while you were packing up the car."

"And you think you know something." Dean sounds pleased.

"The reports _are_ varied, two of the victims were attacked with knives, one with his own baseball bat, and one with a broken glass."

"Were the knives from the victim's homes, too?" Dean asks.

Sam can't help smiling. "Yeah. And the victims all say the kids were carrying something when they came to the door. One said cookies, one said candy, one wasn't sure, the other said a jar full of change."

"Part of how they're getting in the door?" Dean asks, frowning a little.

"I don't think so. I mean, it may help, but I think it's something else. The lore on homunculi is pretty slim, but everything I can find says that once you have your mandrake-cum-homunculus, you have to feed it with milk and honey and sometimes blood. Not every source mentioned blood, but every one of them that did had it phrased just like that. 'Sometimes blood.'"

"So, why only sometimes? Why doesn't every homunculus need blood?"

"I think they do," Sam says. "If you're going to keep them around, I think they all need it, but they only need it sometimes. Milk and honey is great for a baby homunculus, but how do you sustain one that's as big as a little kid. What is it living on?"

"You think they're stealing blood?" Dean asks, though not as if he doesn't believe Sam.

"Maybe if it was just one, the alchemist could sustain it on his or her own blood. I don't know, there's no way to tell exactly how much one needs. But if you manage to make a dozen, and they need blood to survive, even if it's only occasionally, then that's more blood than a single person can comfortably part with, I'm betting."

"And nothing in any of the articles say anything about the little vampire kids running off with bottles of blood?" Dean asks.

"I don't think they drink it. Or only metaphysically, anyway. I only got through a couple of articles, but I found at least three more I didn't get a chance to read. It may be one of those things the cops are withholding as essential elements of the crime. But probably it's just too weird to report."

"Why not have your creepy little pseudo-kids break into a blood bank?" Dean complains.

Sam shrugs. He can think of ten reasons off the top of his head. "Maybe it has to be fresher than that. Or maybe the victims have something in common that makes their blood ideal. Or maybe each victim has a different blood type, and the alchemist is working his way through them to see what works. Or maybe blood bank blood is too clean. Or maybe it's just a matter of difficulty. If the only blood banks around are in hospitals, which is pretty likely, little kids wouldn't be able to just show up and not be noticed. And what if they don't look much like little kids up close. I mean, they're basically mystically driven constructs made of disparate organic matter. I bet they don't look quite right. Maybe good enough to get an adult to open the door, but not human enough to wander around in any place really public."

Dean nods. "But nobody died?"

"No," Sam says. "All the victims are alive, and only one of them even stayed overnight at a hospital, so the blood loss can't be that severe."

"If a little kid comes into your house and stabs you, it's gotta be hard to even explain to a cop how you didn't manage to stop that shit. How do you add, 'oh, yeah, and he stole a pint of blood' onto that statement?" Dean makes a sympathetic face. "So, how do we kill 'em?"

"Insofar as they're mythical and so scarce that the lore is virtually nonexistent, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I have no idea," Sam says. 

"Shut up, Sammy," Dean says, grinning. "I'll go first. If they need blood to live, don't let 'em have it."

"Probably, but I bet it would take a while. Not useful if they're actually trying to murder us," Sam points out. "Killing the alchemist might do it, but..."

"Yeah, yeah, we don't kill people for being stupid," Dean sighs as though put upon. "Or even for being' stupid and having their tiny metaphysical vampires breaking into people's houses. What about fire?" 

Sam winces a little. "Think zombie, here," Sam says. "It would probably eventually work, but in the short term, the only thing worse than a zombie is a flaming zombie. Our best bet might be just tearing them apart."

"Great," Dean says unenthusiastically.

"This isn't actually our biggest problem," Sam says reluctantly.

Dean gives him a long look.

"What if they can think? They're constructs, but I couldn't find a reference one way or the other. What if they're people?"

"They aren't," Dean says tightly.

"How do you know?" Sam asks, and hopes Dean has an actual answer, even though he knows that Dean doesn't.

Dean doesn't say anything.

***

In Denver, Dean effortlessly locates a horrendously ugly motel room and cadges a city map from the girl working the front desk.

Sam, still in the front seat of the car, eyes a seedy diner a block down on the other side of the road and tries to decide if Dean chooses a motel based on a particular diner, or a diner based on a particular motel. The only certainty is that both will be present within four blocks, and that the motel will be tacky and the diner will be greasy.

Dean gets back in and drives them to the other end of the motel, and they grab their shit and go into their room.

They walk down to the diner to eat. Dean is playing with his iPod, and Sam has to grab his elbow twice to keep him from wandering into stationary objects. Dean leaves it on while he's eating, earbuds dangling around his neck. The result is tinny and hilarious. Dean tells him that real music's ego can take it. Sam sings along in a high pitched muppety voice until Dean throws a single serving container of jam at his head.

Dean shovels chicken fried steak into his mouth and bops along to the music, completely unaware that he's doing it, and Sam kind of loves it. It's kind of freakishly adorable.

At the motel, they tack the city map on the wall and use pushpins to mark the addresses of the victims. They aren't as clustered as Sam had been hoping for. Dean says that just means their alchemist probably has a car. Sam finds this idea deeply disturbing.

Denver is huge.

They get through most of the articles and make plans on visiting victims. It's Dean who points out something Sam had missed in his hurried read-through before they'd headed out from the previous hideous motel room.

"Look, there's one every day until three days ago, and they just stop." Dean clicks slowly through the tabs for each article. "No more after Wednesday." He shifts Sam's laptop around to face him and leans against Sam's shoulder while he runs another search. "No homicides with a home-invasion M.O." He tips his head, and Sam watches Dean thinking, unable to help it. "No homeless deaths, here's a mugging, but it looks like they caught the guy in the act. A shooting, eleven convenience store hold ups, Jesus, remind me I don't want a Slurpee, will you, Sammy?"

"I pity the convenience store robber who is unfortunate enough to strike while you're getting your Slurpee fix, Dean," Sam says dryly, and Dean grins.

"Not to sound insensitive to the misfortune of others or anything, but if this is it, we're looking at a dead trail," Dean muses. "You know how shitty that is, right?"

Sam does. "Let's approach it as a live trail for the time being," he suggests.

Dean sighs. "Yeah, yeah. We'll kick that horse over when we come to it."

Sam has no idea what that means. It's a Dean-ism. He's learned not to ask. 

Sam checks to see if Denver has any decent occult libraries and they discuss tactics for canvassing neighborhoods. Sam finds a half a dozen sites in the city limits that used to host a gallows, but every one of them is now either paved over or a building. He expands his search, and finds a few outside the city that are at least driving-distance close. He hits up the website for the Denver Botanic Gardens and finds nothing useful, but makes a note of their address and phone number anyway.

Dean makes lists of dates and times of attacks, which doesn't tell them anything they don't already know, but makes for an orderly list of whom to talk to.

They go to sleep in their own beds without discussion on the matter.

Sam had expected it, but he's a little disappointed anyway.

***

Sam wakes up because Dean is dragging a hand up the back of his thigh and over the curve of his ass.

"I really wish you were wearing underwear right now," Dean tells him.

"Don't ask me to do things you don't really want me to do," Sam says sleepily. 

Dean is tucked up against his back again, one hand on Sam's shoulder to keep him still, but this time he's holding his hips carefully away from Sam's ass.

"This is not going to lead to sex, is it?" Sam sighs, faintly disappointed.

"I don't know. Probably not. I want to talk to you about something."

It doesn't exactly surprise Sam. It's dark in the room, and Sam is tucked onto his side, and he's willing to hazard a guess that this is how it's going to work, at least for a while. If Dean has something he feels strongly enough about that he needs to tell Sam about it, this is the way that feels safe for Dean. In the dark, unable to see one another’s faces. Sam is okay with it.

"Can I ask you something first?" Sam says, without even realizing he wants to ask Dean something until the question is already out.

"Sure, Sammy," Dean says easily, with no hesitation at all.

"Why aren't we sleeping in the same bed?"

Dean doesn't say anything at first, but his thumb sweeps a gentle fan across the skin of Sam's shoulder. Finally, he says, "There's a bunch of reasons. You want the whole list, or just the most important one?"

Sam wants the whole list, but the curiosity doesn't seem that pressing right now, with Dean's chest warm along the line of Sam's back. "Just the important one," he says.

"It's the same reason we probably won't be sleeping together while we're working," Dean says.

Not fucking, but sleeping together. Sam understands the distinction so clearly that his skin prickles with goosebumps, and for a few seconds he is stupidly, blissfully happy.

"It's distracting," Dean says, and presses a kiss to the back of Sam's neck. "I can't think straight when you're this close, and I won't be able to sleep knowing you're right there, feeling you so close and so warm and smelling like you do." It's probably the most uncomplicatedly sweet thing Dean has ever said to Sam, and Sam feels it in his chest and in the pit of his stomach. "If I know nothing is gonna happen while we're taking care of a job, if I'm sure, then I can mostly not think about it. It's safer. It's important."

"I know," Sam says, and he does, but he is still not terribly pleased about it. "It's okay," he says though, because he thinks Dean might need to hear that.

Dean is quiet for so long that Sam reaches behind him, heedless of Dean's not-restraining hand on Sam's shoulder, and smooths his palm along the hard muscle of Dean's thigh.

"I want to say this in a way that won't piss you off, Sam," Dean says, and tips to rest his forehead next to his hand on Sam's shoulder. "I know you don't want to hear about how this usually works, and I get why. I get not wanting to be..." Dean hesitates for a few seconds, and finally finishes with, "...defined that way."

"Constrained that way," Sam corrects carefully. "Slotted into something inherently specific, bound by rules governing behavior and conduct that were created by people that don't know me, or you, or us together."

"Okay," Dean says, sounding a little pained. "But there's something I think you gotta know, and maybe you know this already because you're pretty fucking smart, but in case you don't, I feel like I gotta say it."

"Dean, if you feel like you have to say something, I want you to. No matter what it is, no matter whether you think I want to know it or not," Sam says honestly.

"Okay," Dean says, and Sam feels the slight lessening of tension in Dean's body, something so faint that Sam hadn't been aware of it.

"Wait a second," Sam says, feeling something like recognition, and eases himself out from under Dean's hand and turns over.

"Sam," Dean says, not quite an objection.

"Just a second," Sam says, and tugs Dean in close, inching up a little himself, and tucks Dean into the curve of his body, tangling their legs together and resting his chin on the top of Dean's head with an arm around Dean's upper back, resting it lightly there, like Dean's hand on his shoulder, no real pressure or restraint, but with the intent to hold. "Okay?" he asks, and hears it in his own voice, quiet wonder, that he gets to do this, that he can hold Dean like this, and _Dean will let him_.

"Yeah," Dean says a little breathily, speaking into the hollow between their bodies, and all the remaining tension seeps out of Dean.

It's a gesture, an offer of absolute acceptance. Sam knows it, and guesses that Dean does, too, even if it's something he will never quite be able to verbalize.

Neither of them say anything for a little while. When Dean eventually does begin to talk, he sounds almost normal, with none of the uncertain care he'd been using.

"You know how vengeful spirits work," he says. "There are a bunch of ways to deal with them, like rocksalt shells and cold iron and banishings, but there's really one way, one big way, _the_ way."

Sam smiles a little that Dean is using their job to illustrate something about their sex life, but he doesn't say anything. This is just the way Dean thinks. He relates everything to what he _knows_ , and Sam himself had outlawed the terminology that Dean might otherwise use.

"Salt and burn," Sam agrees.

"This is like that," Dean says, forehead pressed just below the base of Sam's neck. "You and me, we're gonna like lots of things. Nearly everything, I'm guessing. But there is always gonna be one thing, one big thing, and we need to know it, and all the important parts of it, or it won't work like it should."

Sam thinks about that for a minute or more, mapping kinky sex onto the methodology of rousting vengeful spirits, until he thinks he has the general shape of what Dean means. "And the big thing is that you like pain?" Sam asks, and knows even as he says it that he's missing something.

"No, Sammy. _My_ big thing is pain. That's just me, not you. You got your own big thing. And for me the pain is... that's not even all of it. That's mostly how this works. There's a big thing, a physical thing, but there's also a thing you need that ain't even about your body, just the way it feels in your head and your chest and your guts."

And Dean pulls back and rests a hand on Sam's chest, fingers splayed, and looks Sam right in the face, eyes gleaming a little in the faint light of the arc sodiums outside. "You and me, we're having some fantastic sex here," he says, and smiles a little crookedly at Sam. "But would it be, if you didn't feel like you do, Sam? Or if I didn't? If it wasn't about your head and your chest and your guts just as much as your cock, would we even be talking about this?"

Sam can't believe they're talking about this at all, but he doesn't say so. He doesn't even really think about it for more than an instant, because he speaks Dean, but even if he didn't, that was a declaration of love. It wasn't even ambiguous really, and Sam genuinely hadn't even suspected that Dean had it in him. Sam hadn't doubted the sentiment, exactly, but he'd never expected Dean to say it.

"No," Sam says, and for a second he almost leaves it at that. But then he can't, and Dean will just have to suck it up. "If I didn't love you so much that sometimes it feels like I'm dying a little, the sex would be pointless."

"Jesus, Sam!" Dean objects, and shoves his face against Sam's chest again. "You fucking girl," Dean accuses, muffled. 

Sam grins so hard his cheeks ache a little, and kisses the top of Dean's head several times.

"My point is," Dean says eventually, again talking into the space between their bodies, "that this kind of sex, it's like that. It's as much about what's going on in your head as what's going on with the rest of you. And part of what you gotta do to make it work is know all the things you're trying to do."

"Salting or burning will work, but neither of them is certain without both," Sam says, mostly because he thinks it will ease Dean if Sam turns it back into the metaphor.

"Yeah," Dean says, sounding pleased. "Exactly that."

"Am I missing part of it?" Sam asks, carefully detouring around the phrase 'psychological aspect.'

Dean hesitates. "Not exactly," he says finally. "You are, yeah, but not entirely. You're hitting it some, you just don't know you're doing it. I can live with that until you figure it out."

Sam thinks about that for a second. "So you aren't going to tell me," he says.

"It'll be better for both of us if I don't," Dean says simply.

"Okay," Sam says slowly. He believes Dean, but he can't think of anything that he himself wants that he wouldn't just ask for. He believes Dean, but he doesn't quite get it. Maybe that's Dean's point. "Then don't take this the wrong way, but why are we talking about this right now?"

"Because you need to know it's there," Dean says. "I know how you work, Sammy, and probably you'd figure it out eventually, but I just ain't that patient, so you need to know so you can think about it."

"What if I don't figure it out?" Sam asks, genuinely curious.

"You will," Dean says, with certainty. "That's what you're good at. Figuring out how shit works." Then, quietly, "Look at how much of it you figured out already."

Sam is absurdly reassured.

Dean disentangles himself from Sam gently. "Go back to sleep," he says, and runs a rough hand through Sam's hair. "We gotta work tomorrow."

"Which means this is my last chance for sex before we finish this job," Sam says pointedly.

Dean shakes his head, but Sam can see him smiling. "We're already on this job," is all he says, and slides out of Sam's bed and then crawls into his own.

"Cocktease," Sam says, sighing.

"I'll make it up to you," Dean promises. 

Ten minutes later, Sam is still awake. Dean isn't snoring softly, so it's a good bet that he is, too.

Three minutes or so after that, Dean says wryly, "I didn't mean think about it _right now_."

"I wasn't thinking about that," Sam says honestly. "I was thinking I don't know what my big thing is."

"I know," Dean says. He sounds very sure.

Sam's mouth goes dry. "How do you know?"

Dean doesn't say anything for a long time, but Sam can hear the intent even in the silence. He waits. "I know you, Sam," Dean says. "I know how you move through the world. I see how you think on your face, even when you don't say things. I understand you like no one else on the fucking planet can, like no one else ever will. You know _me_ like that, and the only reason you don't already know what I know is because, for once, I got more information about something than you do."

Sam believes him, but. "It's not like I don't know anything about it."

He dimly sees Dean wave a hand. "That's the difference in knowing the thing in the dark is real and actually having the motherfucker try and rip your guts out," he says.

The image is horrible, yes, but it's so viscerally descriptive of conceptual versus actual knowledge that Sam's cock begins to fill. And it's because Sam _does_ believe Dean, because Dean himself is illustrative of the fundamental truth of it, because there is a very distinct difference between knowing that some people get off on pain and seeing Dean with his back bowed and his eyes glazed, shooting across his own belly because Sam is _hurting him_. And because there are lots of things Sam can think of, has already thought of, that are so conceptually hot that really grasping that that gulf of understanding exists is enough to make all of it, abruptly, seem even hotter.

"Fuck," Sam says. And then, when he can think of nothing else, says, "Fuck," again.

He sits up and just looks across the three feet of space between their beds. He can tell Dean is looking back; Sam can see the dim light reflected in Dean's eyes.

"Tell me," Sam says.

"I'll show you soon," Dean says, which in no way defuses the heat twisting in Sam's belly.

"Tell me," Sam repeats. "I want to know."

"I know you do, Sam," Dean says, faintly amused. "You always want to know. But this'll be better if you don't."

Sam makes a low frustrated sound, and Dean chuckles softly, but without any hint of mockery. It's almost sympathetic.

Sam gets up and crosses to Dean's bed. He's hard, and he can feel Dean looking at him. "Let me in," Sam demands.

Dean makes a frustrated sound, but he slides over and pulls back the blankets to make room for Sam, a grudging invitation.

Sam slides in under the covers and turns to face Dean. "Turn on your side," Sam says. "Facing me."

Dean does, but he sighs, "Sam." This close, Sam can see that he's frowning faintly.

"Just trust me on this one," Sam says gently. "You know more about that, and it's distracting, and okay, we won't do that while we're working, but it's never stopped you from randomly picking up a girl during a job."

"This is not the same," Dean says, emphatically enough to surprise Sam, and then tangles a hand in Sam's hair and gives it a sharp tug, surprising Sam again. "Not the same," Dean repeats.

"No, I know that," Sam says, and shifts across the sheets until he can tangle his legs with Deans and line up their hips. "But this doesn't have to be so... fraught. Not all the time." Sam gathers up their cocks in one hand; Dean is already so wet that lube isn't really necessary, which Sam still finds so hot that it seems a little improbable, considering. He strokes them together, and Dean arches into it with a little surprised noise of pleasure that makes Sam smile. "I know about sex with a guy, and it can be just this. It can be easy, and it might not be as insanely hot, but it will still be good."

It takes Dean a few seconds to adjust to the rhythm of it, but once he does, he nails it. If there's one thing Dean is good at, it's knowing how to use his body effectively, and they are both breathing hard in under a minute. When Sam leans in to kiss him, Dean gives him another of those surprised sounds of pleasure, and then it's all wet, hot mouths, Dean's tongue and the scrape of his teeth, and Dean's cock slicking up Sam's hand and sliding them together so perfectly that Sam can hardly believe it. Dean slings an arm around Sam's waist and drags him in so close that Sam's hand is trapped nearly motionless between them, but it doesn't matter because Dean is shoving his cock through Sam's fist and it's so good Sam doesn't even need to move at all, can just lick at Dean's lips and tongue and let the drag of Dean's cock against his own drive him slowly crazy. Dean comes first with a low, long moan that is totally different from the way he sounds when he's hurting, but no less good because of that. When Dean stops shaking with it, Sam pulls his hand out from between them and holds Dean at the small of his back so he can ride along the slick, smooth skin of Dean's hip, and he comes less than a minute later, his own moan silenced almost entirely by Dean's tongue in his mouth. 

It isn't until after, while they're still tangled together and kissing lazily, that Sam realizes that it's the first time they've actually kissed during, rather than stopping entirely to kiss and then moving on with the rest of it. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he thinks that maybe that should be a bad thing, but it's not, really. It's just a thing.

"I'm not sure I'm convinced that's less distracting, Sammy," Dean says, but he's smiling.

Truthfully, Sam isn't either. However, he is never telling Dean that. "Think of it like an investigation," he suggests. "We'll come up with something that works."

"How do you know?" Dean asks, but not like he really doubts it.

Sam considers it anyway, because he has an answer. It's tickling at the roof of his mouth, he knows exactly what it is, but he has to say it just right. "Because," he says finally. "Because our whole lives are the reason the phrase _carpe diem_ exists." He carefully does not say anything about the way either of them could die tomorrow, or at any time, a hundred different ways. Dean knows already, and saying it out loud will only make this hurtful, and Sam only wants it to be simple and factual. "I can go days without touching you, I can go weeks or months if we have to, but _why should I_?" 

Dean says nothing for a while, but he doesn't move away. Sam can feel Dean's breath on his face, soft and warm, and it offers a comfort he didn't even know he wanted. "I think it's better," Dean says finally. "I think it's safer." But he doesn't use a definitive, which is telling.

"I think you'll find it doesn't change anything," Sam says honestly. "But I can live with that until you figure it out," he adds wryly.

Dean snorts out a laugh, but doesn't actually argue, so Sam will take it.

Two minutes later, Dean is snoring softly, and Sam defiantly doesn't retreat to his own bed.


	8. 8

They wake up in the exact same position in which they had fallen asleep.

One of Sam's legs is asleep, and one of Dean's arms.

Dean looks down between them, and then scratches his belly. "So," he says. "This is itchy."

Sam rolls his eyes.

"First shower," Dean says, and rolls out of bed.

Sam rolls his eyes more.

Sam takes one more look at all of the articles while Dean is in the shower.

"Look at this," he says while Dean pulls on a pair of jeans. Dean leans over his shoulder bare chested and smelling like soap, and Sam works hard not to be distracted. It would suck to prove Dean right this soon. "If you read them in chronological order, I'm pretty sure the number of homunculi actually present for each attack is smaller every time."

Dean leans over further to click through the tabs. Sam has highlighted the pertinent information in each, so it only takes Dean a few seconds to look at each one. "The first victim says several," Sam says, "and the next one says a bunch, but after that it gets specific. The third guy says four, the next one says three, the last two only mention a single kid."

"So what's happening to the rest of 'em," Dean wonders out loud. "Where'd they go?"

Sam shrugs. "We don't know enough to even guess, really."

Dean gives him a sharp look. "But you got a guess anyway," he says, and Sam relaxes against the back of his chair.

"I think whatever the alchemist is trying to do isn't working," Sam says. "I think he's losing them. That they're dying, or falling apart, or whatever homunculi do when whatever magic creates them can't hold them together anymore."

"So why aren't there any more attacks? If he's only got one or two left, why'd they stop cutting people up?"

Sam shrugs. "Again with the mostly baseless speculation, but maybe because it doesn't work. Maybe it was a last ditch plan, and it just doesn't work. This guy," Sam begins, and then pauses. "Or woman. They managed to do something that's so insanely hard that it's barely documented as possible, and is widely regarded as myth, even by people like us who believe some really whacked out stuff. But it boils down to creating life, or a simulacrum of life, but if that's all you want, there are easier ways to do it. Uglier ways. There are a whole slew of living dead that are far easier to make, but this person went with _this_. Even the people that were attacked weren't badly hurt. Alchemy isn't like demonology or black magic. It isn't inherently evil. It's just a little crazy. It's more like mystical science than anything else."

"So, not a killer," Dean says thoughtfully. "So probably the black hen method, because if you're right about that much, I doubt our guy is hanging dudes and planting mandrakes in come soaked soil."

"Oh, gross," Sam says, and Dean grins in the way he always does when he's trying to be foul and has succeeded.

"Aren't homunculi basically created to protect?" Dean asks. "I don't remember anything about them running around assaulting random people."

"Not enough information," Sam says, and Dean gives him that sharp look again. "But protection is subjective," Sam relents immediately. "And we don't know that they aren't capable of it. There's just not enough lore. But even if they are strictly bound only to the protection of their creator, protection is subjective. People can rationalize shit, you know that. If it wasn't, at least one or two of these articles would probably quote the victim as saying: 'It wasn't a kid; it was a thing.'"

"You're pretty sure they don't look like people," Dean says.

"I found two illustrations, which could be totally bogus, but if there's any accuracy at all, then no. No eyes, just sort of inset sockets, rudimentary facial features, hairless and human-shaped without actually looking human." 

"Lemme see," Dean demands, and Sam pulls one up online, and finds the right book to flip through until he locates the other picture. Dean studies each of them for a minute or so. "This one's got an onion head," he says eventually, tapping the book.

Sam rolls his eyes. "Made from mandrake, probably. Plant-like characteristic left over from the transformation, maybe?"

Dean gives the onion-headed homunculus a skeptical look, then take the book out of Sam's hand and puts it on the table.

Then he says, "I want to investigate something." He drags Sam's chair back from the table and swings a leg over Sam's lap, settling down to straddle him. Sam is so surprised that he is speechless. Dean tips Sam's chin up with one hand and then leans down and kisses him. It's an easy kiss, the drag of Dean's lips and sweep of his tongue just a gentle urging, and Sam parts his lips and lets Dean kiss him, kisses back with the same kind of ease, all exploratory and relaxed, almost entirely without urgency. Sam can feel it when Dean hardens in his jeans -- Sam himself has been hard since Dean swung a leg over him -- but Dean doesn't seem to feel the need to do anything about it. He cups a hand around Sam's head, fingers threaded through the hair behind Sam's ear. His thumb sweeps along Sam's hairline softly. Sam's hands are curled around Dean's waist just above his jeans. Sam's not really clear on how they got there, and isn't that worried about it.

Eventually Dean pulls away and licks his lips. "Hmm," he says.

"What was the purpose of that investigation, exactly?" Sam asks.

Dean smirks a little. "I don't usually kiss people taller than me," he says. "I wanted to be on top. See how it feels to kiss you when you're the one leaning up."

Sam is amused. "And how did that work out for you?"

Dean shrugs. "I like it either way," he says. "But you being taller kinda does it for me." In spite of the fact that Sam's four additional inches of height has always been a source of irritation to Dean, he sounds remarkably okay with the admission. Before Sam can really think of what he wants to say about that, Dean says, "Get in the shower, Sammy. Daylight's wasting."

***

They eat breakfast in the same diner they'd had dinner in, and that's the only part of their morning that is even remotely normal.

They talk about splitting up to talk to the victims, but ultimately decide that sticking together, at least for the first couple, is probably wiser considering their total lack of anything resembling hard facts. They've worked cases with less evidence before, but they've never worked anything quite like this. Having no real idea of how much potential for violence is actually present, Sam's speculation notwithstanding, they decide on prudence.

It's not the first time ever that they've agreed on the safer plan of action, but it's rare enough that Sam makes a note of it.

It only gets weirder after that. Even for them.

They head to the house of the victim closest to them purely for the sake of convenience. It's one of the victims right in the middle of the list, but Dean thinks it doesn't really matter what order they talk to them in, since they're probably going to have to end up talking to all of them eventually. Sam doesn't particularly disagree.

It's a perfectly ordinary house with an attached garage, a small, neatly tended front lawn, and a wrap around porch. It's blue, with white fake shutters and trim.

The door opens before they even step up onto the boards of the porch, and the guy that comes out makes the back of Sam's neck prickle with his presence. There's a bandage wrapped around his head, but his eyes are clear and dark and perceptive as he looks each of them over.

"Warlock," Dean says, and Sam doesn't disagree, a pentagram is prominently displayed on a chain around the guy's neck, but he has no sense of threat. Which doesn't always mean anything, granted. But still.

The warlock looks over his shoulder at someone Sam can't see, and says, "Sam and Dean are here."

Sam and Dean exchange a look of surprise.

"Come on in, guys," the warlock says. "You want a beer, or is it too early in the day for you?" He looks at Dean when he says it. Then at Sam. "There's coffee, too," he says.

Sam and Dean exchange another look of surprise.

The warlock waits patiently for them to make up their minds.

Sam has absolutely nothing on him that might combat witchcraft, and he's betting Dean doesn't either. He's not crazy about the idea of placing himself within the heart of a warlock's mystical domain.

"The rest of my coven are inside," the warlock says gently. "We've been waiting for you. My name's Edward." There's a pause, and Edward smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "If you want to go grab some more weapons before you come in, we won't hold it against you."

"What are our other options, really?" Dean asks Sam, and Sam nods his agreement.

They follow him inside.

The next two hours or so are utterly bizarre.

Everyone in Edward's coven is sporting either a bandage or a very new, shiny scar. Sam takes in the room, and says, "Seven is a mystical number," to which Edward nods, and it could be a spell, farseeing maybe, but Sam doesn't think so. He has a hunch. "Which one of you is the clairvoyant?"

"That would be me," says a smallish, older guy in a suit and tie. "I'm Chris. I'm sorry about your death visions, Sam." He sounds genuinely sympathetic without being in any way insulting about it. "Mine aren't like that, usually, but I've had a few really horrifying ones. They sucked like nothing else."

Sam nods, because, yes. Exactly that. "Can you have them at will?" Sam asks, because he's always wanted to ask that question, and has never known anyone who'd know.

"Not exactly. Some of them just come, but sometimes I can summon one. It's exhausting." He looks at Sam for a long moment. "If you want to learn the ritual, I'll teach you, but you should know that it probably won't change the nature of them. They will probably still be uniformly about death."

"I'll think about it," Sam says. He can feel Dean looking at him, but doesn't look back.

At no point do they have to lie to explain their presence, evade questions to conceal their purpose, or pretend that they do anything other than what they actually do.

"We've got notes," a small, dark eyed woman with a bob volunteers. Her name is Cecily, and they apparently have her to thank both for the very good coffee and the meticulously detailed notes, which are simply stated, and ordered with bullet points. Not only does the coven know what is going on to a significant degree, they've made a few leaps of logic that Sam hasn't managed yet. These points of speculation are all footnoted, to explain how they reached their conclusions. The notes include information that Sam and Dean would have had to work their asses off to obtain, such as the fact that nowhere within the city limits is zoned for chickens, and that the coven had searched anyplace they could get to by car in a reasonable amount of time outside the city, and had been unable to locate any black hens. At least one of them had a ward in place on her front door that should have stopped anything mystical from passing if it had evil intent. She admits that wards aren't always perfect, and anything strong enough could break through, but the homunculus had been standing right on top of it when she'd opened the door, and it had not reacted to the ward at all.

All of them had recognized the "children" as not human. None of them had sensed anything evil about them, however.

"Witches are too curious for their own good," a woman named Helen tells Sam. "Even after we knew what would happen, we kept letting them in. We knew they wouldn't kill us, and it took us a while to figure out exactly what was going on. It would have been easier if he had just asked. We would have gifted him with blood freely if he had no evil intent and he thought it might help."

"Isn't blood magic pretty much a no-go for you guys?" Sam asks.

"This isn't about the blood, not really," a pert blond named Amy (who reminds Sam a little uncomfortably of Meg) says. "It's about the magic. Besides, we aren't Wiccans. We're Pagans, more or less. And blood sacrifice isn't inherently evil. It's just tricky. Blood is powerful. There's no margin of error."

Sam falls into a fascinatingly detailed metaphysical discussion with four other people at once, covering the information in the notes, first, and then diverging into further speculation that they hadn't had enough basis for to put down on paper. Cecily, it turns out, is an Ancient History and Theology professor, and is maybe the best historical occult source of information that Sam has ever met, at least as far as information and theory goes. He gets her phone number, and she gets his, and he promises to send her anything interesting in her field. Sam looks up at some point to check on Dean, and finds him occupied with two other members of Edward's coven, Edward himself and a woman almost as tall as Dean, and listens just long enough to ascertain that they're exchanging monster stories, so Dean is probably content enough.

It's like being at a cocktail party where everyone has crazy metaphysical shit in common.

Perhaps most importantly, they know who the alchemist is. Or not who, actually, but where, which is good enough.

"A homunculus is basically a creature of pure magic," Edward tells them. "Alchemy is just a very organized form of magic. It would probably work better if those few who practice it would give up on the belief that there has to be a system for everything." He shrugs. "Anyway, tracking a creature of pure magic isn't that hard for us. They leave a mark on the fabric of the world."

"We've never met a witch that wasn't trying to kill us," Dean says, and Sam elbows him, but Edward looks amused.

"Evil begets evil," he says. "We like to think of ourselves like doctors. First, do no harm."

"Witchdoctors!" Dean cackles, and Sam elbows him again.

"Not the same," Edward says sternly, but he still looks amused.

"Why didn't you guys go talk to him?" Sam asks, genuinely curious.

The tall woman Dean had been talking to is the one who answers. Sam hadn't caught her name. "We've done some cleansings," she says. "We've even done a few fertility rites for people who are desperate enough to try anything. We summoned rain, once, in Iowa. It took all of us together to do it, and it took all we had. We aren't hunters, though, not like you are. We all have day jobs." She smiles faintly. "And ritual magic, if you really believe, has structure. It has lines that you cannot cross."

"Like the rule of threes," Sam says.

She tilts her head to one side in a way that isn't quite agreement or disagreement. "That isn't our particular faith, but the sentiment isn't that different. Try to understand, we mean no insult to you. What you do is necessary, perhaps even essential. But it is ugly. It walks in the gray places of good and evil as we, here, define it, and we respect you, but we don't want to be like you."

"You don't think this guy is evil any more than we do," Sam says, a little stung. He likes these people. Their assessment smarts. "You can't believe that we're going to go in there and just kill him."

"No, Sam," Cecily says, distressed. She puts a hand on his arm. "If we thought that, we would not have let you in. We wouldn't have told you anything. You'd have found us each in our homes with nothing to add to the reports that you already have access to. I wouldn't have made you the good coffee." She smiles a little, and Sam relaxes.

"But you _could_ , if it comes to that," Chris says, not smiling at all. "You have the skill, you have the psychological capacity to deal death."

Dean steps close to Sam and cups his elbow carefully.

"We don't," Chris continues. "Not only because we don't want it, but because we haven't had to. The things you have seen and done would break the minds of some of us." He pauses for a long moment. "You are frightening men, but you are also just men, and everything I've seen makes me believe that you try to do the right thing. But if we are wrong about this alchemist, if it comes to the crux of a terrible decision, the two of you can make that decision."

"So we're just here to do the dirty work," Dean says tightly.

Chris takes a look at Dean's face and steps back.

It's Edward who says, "If we do the dirty work ourselves, we run the risk of becoming the kind of witches you've met before. The ones that try to kill you."

"Intent is as important as action," the tall woman tells them. "We have faith that you will do the right thing. We have it with the understanding that if you don't, all of us here will share in the taint of your actions. We are responsible for what you do. We believe that you won't do anything that isn't absolutely necessary."

"How many of you were hurt or died in your vision, Chris?" Sam asks flatly.

Chris sighs. "Two of us. And Cecily..." He turns his head a little, chin tipped down, and doesn't finish that sentence. Sam doesn't press; he suspects he knows, just looking at Cecily's horrified face. "We think it's because the homunculus sees us as a threat, recognizes us and believes we mean to harm its creator."

Sam thinks it's probably the precise opposite of that, but chooses to keep that information to himself.

"And us?" Dean asks.

"Neither of you. One vision that just came, and two that I summoned. To be sure. You two leave there unharmed." Chris spreads his hands. "I can't see what happens. I think the house is warded. But I see you come out alive."

"Well," Dean says. "That's reassuring, I guess."

"We really don't want to offend you," Edward says. "It wasn't our intent."

"In that case, you really suck at it," Dean says. Sam doesn't elbow him this time. Dean is not wrong.

The coven in general looks kind of shame-faced.

Sam sighs. "You might as well quit it. You know we're going to do it."

"Not until dark," Chris says.

"Was that in your vision?" Dean asks with a shark smile.

"Yes," Chris says simply.

"Yeah, well. In spite of the fact that you guys think we're half-evil and kill-happy, me and Sammy like to check things out before we actually confront potential bad guys. It keeps us from making 'ugly' mistakes. It's a decent bet that our alchemist has a day job, too, which will make it easier to look around. So thanks for the coffee and the insults, but we've about had all the hospitality we can stand." 

And Sam, who is not quite as pissed off as Dean, but is definitely a little offended, says to Chris, "And are you sure it was tonight? What phase was the moon in? Where was it in the sky? What time was it? Were there cars in all the driveways or parked on the street? Also, blood is almost invisible on denim or leather in moonlight. How sure are you about that 'unharmed'?"

Chris looks a little sick and stunned.

"It's my life, my brother's life, that you're risking if you're wrong," Sam says. "Are you _sure_."

"We have something for you," a woman says, and the other coven members draw back in one wave of motion. They don't look surprised, but the way that they move makes Sam think they don't want to touch her.

"This is Claire," Edward says carefully, and looks at Sam and then at Dean; there is a clear warning in his eyes, though Sam has no idea what he's trying to warn them about.

She is a waif of a woman, so short that she has to crane her neck up to look at Sam, even from three feet away. She has pale eyes and hair, and if anyone could ever be said to appear to be ethereal, it is definitely her.

Sam hadn't even noticed her there. Or rather, he had, when he had first come in and had been counting coven members, but he doesn't remember her from any point after that. She hadn't been involved in Sam's metaphysical conversation, she hadn't been trading stories about monsters with Dean. She had faded from his mind. He looks at Dean, who is looking back, his face saying that he knows what Sam knows.

He counts off coven members in his head, just to be sure. Edward, Cecily, Chris, Helen, Amy, tall woman with no name, and Claire. Seven. Shit.

"Is that glamour or telepathy?" Sam asks. Either way, he is unhappily impressed.

She laughs, a surprisingly ebullient sound from her slight body. "That was just a spell. I wanted to get a feel for you," she says, and holds out both hands, one toward Sam and one toward Dean. She's holding out something that looks a little bit like a watch. If you don't look closely, anyway. It's a disc of silver about the size of a watch face affixed to three cords of braided leather in some way that Sam can't actually identify. She's holding them with the back side up, the part that will touch their skin, if they were going to wear them. That side is inscribed with a pentagram and runes so small that Sam leans in and squints at them to make them out. Whomever had set them had been skilled and precise. He recognizes most of them as protection. She turns them over by folding her fingers back over her palms. The face looks decorative on first glance, but then Sam sees the green man etched into a leafy expanse, and the leaves are cleverly concealed protective symbols, the edges etched with sigils.

Sam has seen protective jewelry in all shapes and sizes, and he has never seen anything done so beautifully or skillfully. These are works of art, both aesthetically and mystically.

"I know you're angry with us," she says, sounding pretty unconcerned about that fact. "But will you trust us?"

Dean looks at Sam. It isn't the first time ever that Dean has left something up to Sam, but it's the first time it has ever been so clear on his face. Sam can almost hear him thinking: _This is your ballgame, Sammy._

"Can I see them again?" he asks.

Claire flips them over again, and this time Sam searches for any minute differences in the two, any runes or sigils he doesn't recognize, anything that might be inimical or even ambiguous. "I don't know this rune," he says, and drags a notepad from his pocket. Edward hands him a pen, and Sam draws it. "The other side, please?" He repeats the process, this time finding two runes that he doesn't know, both of which he puts on paper. He inspects the edges and the leather and even the clasps.

The tall girl whose name he still doesn't know brings him five books, all titles he recognizes and one that he desperately covets. He looks all three runes up in every book, just to be sure.

"These are..." he drags at his mind for a word big enough to fit, and finally comes up with, "... priceless."

"It took all seven of us six moons to make them," Claire says. "They're for you."

"You don't have to give us anything," Dean says. "This is what we do. You don't have to buy it."

"No, you don't understand," Chris says. "They've always been for you. We knew when we made them that they were for you. I saw it, but not why. I didn't know why you would be here, then. They aren't payment. They were made for you, meant for you. They're gifts."

"Six months ago," Dean says dubiously.

But Sam believes him, them.

"We accept," he says. Dean looks at him, but doesn't argue.

"Any one of us will be able to find you," Claire says. "Any of the crafters can trace them."

"I know," Sam says. Dean looks at him again, but still doesn't argue. "They're worth it," Sam tells him, and it's true. Even if this entire coven turns evil and tracks them down and tries to kill them, they are worth it.

"The leather was cured in hart’s blood," Claire tells them conversationally, and accepts a silver knife from Edward. "Blessed by seven new moons." Sam puts one hand on Dean's arm to keep him from freaking out, and holds out his other, palm up. "The silver is pure." Claire deftly cuts a tiny slice into the center of his palm, and presses the bracelet into it, skin side down. "And your blood is already blessed." Sam curls his fist around it, feels the jolt of it all the way up his arm, and when Claire tugs the bracelet free, there is no blood on the metal and no cut on his hand. She puts it around his other wrist and hooks it, then bends the hook over on itself. "Never take it off," she recommends.

She does all of this without actually touching Sam's skin.

"Huh," Dean says, and offers Claire his hand. She ignores it, and points at his other hand. Dean's face scrunches into discontent.

"She wants your marked hand," Sam explains. "The Valkyrie mark."

Dean switches hands, and Claire repeats the ritual precisely, hooking the bracelet onto the opposite wrist. "Never take it off," she repeats sternly, giving Dean a look.

"Yeah, I got it," Dean says, rolling his eyes. Claire rolls her eyes back.

"Are you psychometric?" Sam asks when the two of them are done making faces at each other.

She gives Sam a slow, sincere smile, but doesn't actually answer the question.

"Why did you even report it," Dean asks suddenly. "Why make police reports and talk to the papers if you already knew what was happening?"

Claire looks at Dean like she thinks he's adorable. "So you would come."

Dean stares at her. "Next time send an e-mail," he suggests.

"Are you all psychic?" Sam asks.

"No," Claire says. It's clearly designed to kill the topic.

Sam ignores it. He has a heart-stopping suspicion. "How old are you?"

"I would sooner cut out my own heart, Sam," she says. "Everything I've ever learned, I've learned to be strong enough not to be made into a tool."

"Jesus," Sam says, and Claire's coven flanks up behind her as though they think they need to protect her. "I'm your safety net. We are. Just in case."

"Everything I've ever learned, I've learned to be strong enough not to be made into a tool," she repeats.

"And now you're mine, too," he says faintly, the expanse of what he's just unknowingly agreed to abruptly splayed across his mind.

Sam catches Dean before he can take a step, and looks at him. Dean's face is set in lines of fury and fear, and Sam has no doubt that Dean would willingly take on a coven of witches on their own blessed ground without a second thought over this, but Dean lets Sam stop him.

"It doesn't matter," Sam says, even though it does. It matters a lot. But. "Dean. This is a good plan. I'd have preferred to know before the exchange of blood and jewelry, but I would have said yes."

"I wouldn't have let you," Dean growls, the murderous muscle in his jaw clenching.

"That's why he needs a plan," Claire says gently. "That's why we both need a plan. So the people who love us don't have to do the worst thing possible."

"For what it's worth," Chris says, "stay with Dean. Any path that is not with Dean is the wrong path."

"I will never leave Dean," Sam says.

Dean relaxes very slightly at that. So does Chris, actually.

"How far can you see?" Sam asks.

"Far enough," Chris says tiredly.

"He found me," Claire says. "Years before I could do anything, I was already a witch. I'm one of the lucky ones. I knew it was coming."

"Have you ever--"

Chris shakes his head. "Only Claire. And you, I guess."

Sam would like to ask her about her power. He's almost sure it's psychometry, and he definitely has the worst power of any of the others he's met. Fucking Death Visions.

Although, he supposes, useful in his line of work. Horrible, but useful.

He doesn't ask. He remembers Ansem telling Andy that if he used his powers, they would grow stronger. Sam has no choice. The visions come, or they don't. He can't stop them. But his curiosity is not strong enough to even obliquely suggest to Claire that he would like to see her do something that might possibly make her very slightly more evil, so he says nothing at all.

"So, just to be clear, is there an actual alchemist with one or more actual homunculi that we need to be checking out?" Dean asks. "Because I'm already pissed, but if the seven of you just spent an hour spinning us a pile of bullshit, I'm gonna be _really_ pissed." And if anything, Dean is downplaying how pissed off he is. Sam can hear the coil of it in his voice.

"Dean," Sam says.

"I knew you were coming," Chris says. "I didn't know why until all of this started happening. We didn't set you up."

"Except with the police reports and the news articles, and, of course, with the magic bracelets," Dean says acidly.

"Dean," Sam says again.

"We didn't create the situation," Claire says, and now she sounds a little nettled, which Sam is petty enough to find slightly satisfying.

"No," Dean says. "You just took advantage of it when it happened, took advantage of us when we came to help you."

"Dean," Sam says, but he's got nothing else, really. Sam would have agreed if asked, but Dean is not wrong.

And Claire clearly knows it. "We're trying to do the right thing," she says.

"No, not we," Dean says in a low, tight voice that Sam recognizes as one of the most dangerous voices Dean is capable of in its total lack of overt threat. "You. They helped you put it together, but you think that if it really comes down to it, it'll be just you and Sam. If you're good, you won't want to risk them. If you're evil, you'll kill them or just leave 'em." Sam puts a hand on Dean's shoulder, and doesn't even bother to pretend that he's doing anything other than trying to keep Dean calm. Dean lets him, which means Dean probably isn't going to do any actual violence.

"So you put together something that will protect Sam from the worst of what you can do, just in case, and bind it to him with blood, which will make it more effective, and will mark him for you. If Sam turns, he'll ditch the bracelet, won't be able to stand it touching him, but the magic will still be there for you to follow."

Sam is a little ashamed that he'd thought Dean might not fully grasp the implications. He should have known better, really; Dean knows his job.

"The part where you could have done the right thing is when you could have told him the real reason, and then asked for his permission before you just went ahead and did it. I would've fought it, but I would’ve lost, 'cause Sam really does want someone to stop him. Sam would see the whole thing as a fucked up cosmic balance system. Sam would’ve said yes. The only thing you got this way that you wouldn't have got by doing the right thing, is now I will not hesitate to kill you if I see you coming. And in the interest of doing the right thing, Claire, I'm letting you know, you're wrong to think it will end up just you and Sam. It will be you and us. If anything happens and you come after Sam, I will kill you. It don't matter which one of you is evil. The rest of the world can go straight to hell."

Claire looks terrified and furious in equal amounts, but whatever she means to say is cut off abruptly when Chris says, "Behold!" in a deep, hard voice totally unlike the one he's been speaking in for the last hour. Everyone turns to look, and Chris' eyes are glassy and he has one hand thrown out in front of him, not like he's grabbing for or attempting to stop anything, but in a way that, combined with that deep-voiced pronouncement, Sam's mind immediately relates to Biblical prophets, the heavy Old Testament stuff, and he's sure Chris is having a vision. He's not sure there is actually a more obvious way for someone to have a vision, in fact, and he thinks distantly that that must be a little inconvenient.

Sam watches with interest, but that's apparently all there is to it, if your visions aren't demon-driven. Chris stands like that for ten or twelve seconds, and then his eyes clear and his hand falls to his side. He looks frantic and horrified and fearful, and he's so pale that Sam thinks he might faint. He looks first at Claire, and then at Dean, and then at Sam. "Claire, go stand in the kitchen doorway." His voice is shaking so much he's almost stuttering.

Claire does it without question.

Then Chris turns to one side, falls to his knees, and throws up on Edward's carpet.

Sam and Dean exchange a look.

When he's done, he wipes the back of his hand unsteadily across his mouth, and without even standing up, says, "Go, now. Leave."

"No," Sam says. "You're going to tell us." Because he knows how visions work, and there is no way to know for sure that whatever Chris saw isn't vital information.

Chris just shakes his head and looks sick. "I'm never going to tell _anyone_ ," he says wretchedly, but Sam feels almost no sympathy for him right now.

"You're going to tell us," Sam repeats.

"It doesn't matter," Chris says, his eyes too-bright as he looks up at Sam. "If you leave now, it won't happen."

"He's lying," Dean says, and Sam agrees.

"The part that matters to you won't happen," Sam says. "But it wasn't just about you."

"No," Chris says. "And I know you aren't going to hurt me to force me to tell you."

"Torture isn't really on my list, no, but I'll bet I can convince you," Sam says. "Claire's power won't work on me, so it has to be Dean. Something is going to happen if she touches him, something so terrible that you're exhibiting all the symptoms of physical shock just from seeing it happen in your head. So that means she will see something, know something, and whatever that is, we need to know it."

He pulls the pistol from the back of his jeans and levels it at Claire. Someone makes a choked sound, and Sam ignores it. "This isn't a vision, but I promise you, this is how it's going to go. Dean will walk over and touch Claire, and I will cover him while he does it." Dean steps around behind Sam on cue, putting himself closer to Claire without crossing Sam's line of fire. "If Claire tries to run, I will shoot her in the leg, and Dean will touch her anyway. None of you are strong enough or fast enough to stop us, because you don't want to be like us. Good for your karma, but bad for this particular situation. Then, whatever you saw will happen, Chris, and you don't want that. We don't want to hurt anyone, but we will if we have to. Or you could tell us what you saw." And, "If you touch that knife, Edward, Dean will shoot you."

At the edge of Sam's vision, Edward holds up both hands and takes a step back.

"I'll do it," Claire says. "Voluntarily." She takes a step toward Dean.

"No, Claire!" Chris nearly screams, and Claire stops. "It will hurt both of them," Chris begs Sam. "Both of them."

"If it comes to the crux of a terrible decision," Sam quotes deliberately. "You knew who we were when you invited us here. Nobody has to get hurt. Claire doesn't have to touch anyone. Just tell us what you saw."

Chris closes his eyes and retches again, this time without bringing anything up. Sam waits, not patiently, but not really impatiently either, watching all of them as much as he can, trusting Dean to be doing the same.

Sam sees Edward moving again, creeping toward the silver knife Claire had used to cut their palms, and Dean says, "You think you won't use it," his tone almost casual. "Hell, I don't think you will, either. It's just what you do, when you're scared. You think it will be better if you can defend yourself. But I won't take that chance. If you touch it, I'll shoot you. I'll try not to kill you, but I make no promises."

"You're both completely crazy," Edward whispers.

"Considering that you've lied to us, manipulated us, tagged us like mystical whales without our consent, and just tried to grab your holy ceremonial knife used for ritual blood sacrifice to potentially stab one of us, your opinion on it doesn't mean dick to me," Dean says.

"Something is going to happen to Dean," Chris says, eventually. He doesn't stand up, but he does shift away from the patch of floor on which he'd vomited. He leans back against the leg of a chair.

"No," Sam says, ruthlessly squashing a jolt of panic. "Start at the beginning. Don't pick and choose, tell everything. The devil is always in the details."

Chris takes a deep breath. "It was an accident, or it was going to be an accident," he says in a long sigh. "Dean and Claire were yelling at each other. I couldn't hear everything. It's like that most of the time, like I can't hear but I know the gist of what's being said. But it was about Dean's responsibility to your wishes, and it looked like he would have liked to kill her."

"Dean will kill you if you're a danger, but never because he's angry," Sam defends Dean automatically, unable to help it. "Otherwise all seven of you would be dead already."

Chris just nods tiredly. "It wasn't him, anyway. It was Claire, but it was an accident. She was angry, she wasn't watching how close they were, and she touched his hand, and." Chris stops, and Sam watches him swallow. "They both were still, and Claire put both hands on Dean's face. Dean had his hands on top of hers. And they both started to scream." Chris closes his eyes, but then opens them again immediately. Sam can guess why. "It was like they were locked together." He sounds almost calm now. "And sometimes, with Claire, I can see what she sees. Not exactly, it's... distorted, or like something in another language, but I knew she could see something that was going to happen to him, that it was... It was worse than the worst thing she could imagine. I could see blood and fire, there were... things, shadow-things, and so much blood... She was lost in it, and couldn't let go. You tried to pull her away, and it, something, knocked you back. You fell, and we all tried but we couldn't get close to them. And they were still screaming, and Dean started bleeding from his nose and his ears, first, and you tried to pull Claire away again, and you were screaming, too, like it was terrible to be close to them, and it knocked you back again. You broke the table when you landed. Then Claire was bleeding too, from her mouth, and Dean was bleeding from his eyes, and you, you." Chris chokes on it for two or three seconds, and then manages a strangled whisper. "You shot her. Twice. In the head. You. And she fell, and let go of Dean, and Dean fell, and I. I would have killed you, I was going to, and then you shot me." 

Chris blinks, as though surprised. "And that's all."

Sam puts his gun away. "Can someone get Chris a glass of water?" he asks. He's aware of Dean behind him, gun still drawn, which is exactly the way the world is supposed to work, so he doesn't have to hesitate to sink down in front of Chris and cross his legs tailor fashion. "I'm going to ask you some questions that might make some of it make more sense. You won't be able to answer some of them, and that's okay. But I need you to really think here."

"Is it like that?" Chris asks bleakly, as though Sam hadn't spoken. "Is it always like that for you?"

Sam sighs. "Yeah, pretty much."

"Jesus," Chris says. "Oh, Jesus, how are you not insane?" he asks, and then starts to cry quietly. 

It actually takes three glasses of water for Chris to calm down enough to answer questions, and they don't find out as much as Sam would have liked. He is almost certain that Claire is also telekinetic, which would explain how Sam had been shoved back, and Sam gives her a short version of his one and only experience with it for reference. He suspects that the shadow-things might be demons. Sam gives Chris a description of an exorcism, describes the black cloud of a demonic presence fleeing, Chris nods slowly and frowns uncertainly at the same time. So, maybe. Chris can't give any real information on the place. It was dark, something was on fire, it was big.

The things that Sam most wants to know, though, the how and the when, they can't work out. The only thing Chris is sure of is that Dean didn't look significantly older than he does now, which means it could be a five or even a ten year window, really. Even when Sam talks him through a list of Dean's scars, hoping for something, some new thing that they might be able to use as a reference point, Chris just shakes his head and says there was too much blood.

"Is it true?" Claire asks, when Sam stands up and helps Chris carefully to his feet, conscious of the fact that Chris seems totally okay with accepting Sam's help, Sam's presence. "My powers don't work on you?"

Sam looks at her. "It's theoretically true," he admits.

"Theoretically?" Chris says. He sounds like he'd like to be pissed, but can't find the energy.

"Telekinesis probably works on me, but since I'm not well-versed in the physics of the energy that it creates, I can't be sure if it works on _me_ or on the air around me, or the things around me, like the clothes I'm wearing, or my shoes. I didn't know to look for it the only time I've ever met a telekinetic, and I can't remember for sure how he pushed me. The only other one of us I've met could tell you to do something, and you'd do it. I was immune. Dean gave him the car." Sam decides not to mention the evil twin. It sounds insane, even for them.

"Thanks a lot, Sam," Dean grumbles.

"Can I try?" she asks.

Sam looks at Chris, who shakes his head. "I don't know. It doesn't usually happen like that. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've had one like that, just in time to stop it."

"Most of mine are like that," Sam says. He's tired now, and scared, and confused, and he would really like to go back to the motel and have sex with his brother and then maybe take a vacation to Alaska for the rest of his life. He's very aware that more than half the people in this room want him to go away forever, and he sees the irony in the fact that that half does not include the girl he pointed a gun at or the man that he interrogated, but he just can't find it funny right now. Mostly he hates what he just did, it makes him feel sick and unhappy, but he would do it again exactly the same. They don't know as much as Sam would like, but now they at least know that there is something to know.

"You know that using it makes it stronger? I don't know how that works in an actual measurement-of-evil sense, but the potential is there."

"I know," Claire says. "I haven't touched anyone in more than a year, believe me, I _know_."

"You might see things you don't want to know," Sam says, because it seems fair to warn her. His life is fairly horrifying.

"If it works on you, it's inevitable," Claire says with at least a little humor. "Since I don't actually want to know anything."

Sam holds out his hand. Claire looks at it for fifteen seconds, and then takes it.

Nothing happens.

"Wow, okay, so this is going to be weird, I know," she says breathlessly, staring at their hands, "but do you think you could hug me?"

Sam can practically hear Dean rolling his eyes from across the room, but Sam absolutely gets it, and pulls her into his arms and doesn't object when she curls her little hands around the sides of his neck and clings to him more closely than anyone he's ever held a gun on probably should.

He can't believe this is his life.

"It's just people," she tells Sam, her face jammed up against his chest. "Which I know I should be grateful for, because if it was everything I touched, what the hell would I do? I can't not touch anything ever. I have to eat, I have to wear clothes, I have to..." She swallows audibly. "I'd kill myself, if it was like that. But I didn't know how hard it was going to be not to touch _anyone_." She scrubs her face against his chest and pets at his hair. He has to bend down a little so she can do it. She's _tiny._

Sam glances over at Dean. He appears to be attempting not to laugh.

A minute or so later, Dean is bored. "Wrap it up, Sammy. We still got a homunculus wreaking havoc and shit."

"It's not wreaking havoc," Sam says, and rolls his eyes, but he pulls away, and Claire lets him go. Her eyes are a little red, but she's smiling.

"You should visit," she says. Sam glances around at the rest of the coven. Chris looks resigned. Everyone else looks dubious.

"I don't think it's a good idea," Sam says truthfully. "But you should call. Me, not Dean. If you call Dean, he's going to assume you're evil."

Claire snorts. "He's going to assume I'm evil whether I call him or not," she says. "I'm thinking of prank calling according to the lunar cycle." 

"Hilarious," Dean says, scowling, but he no longer looks like he'd be happy to kick her in the face a few times, so that's something.

Sam feels like he should say something, but has no idea what. No hard feelings? Sorry I pulled my piece? I was probably bluffing?

So he says, "Claire, I've met others like me, you included, three times. Both other times, I went there because of visions. If I have one about you, I won't call you. I'll call Chris."

Claire nods slowly, not confused in the least.

"Chris, I know it doesn't work the same for you, but if you see something." Sam hesitates. "Call whichever one of us seems appropriate," he says finally.

"The rest of you have my number," Sam says. "And you're still welcome to use it, but I won't be offended if you lose it. I'd avoid Dean at all costs for the rest of your lives, however." Because it will do no one any good to be unclear about Dean's sincerity.

Dean helpfully smirks at all of them.

As they're walking to the door, Dean casually picks up the silver knife and says to Edward, "You come outside with us." Edward gives him a look that clearly states that he thinks that plan is madness. Dean says, as though he asked a question, "Because if you don't, your holy item is coming home with me. It's a nice knife, too. Silver won't hold an edge, but most things I'll be killing with it react to the silver more than the edge."

Sam has absolutely no idea why Dean wants to get Edward alone, but he looms next to Edward anyway, who grudgingly precedes them outside.

Sam closes the door behind the three of them.

Edward looks at them, his mouth a tense line. He doesn't look angry. Sam thinks he's afraid, and trying hard not to be.

Dean, strangely gentle, says, "I never really got witches." He's giving Edward a look that is uncommonly kind for Dean. "Not the ones that try to kill us; I get those guys. But you guys, you 'do no harm' guys." He shakes his head. "I don't get it. I know I don't, and I'm not asking you to explain it to me. It ain't gonna change anything, not now. I've fucked up before, and I'm not sure if that makes me more qualified or less to tell you that you fucked up. It ain't that you wanted to protect them, or that you were willing to break your no harming rule to do it. That's just human nature, and everybody's got a right to protect themselves and their family." He turns the knife over in his hands. "It's that you thought of this as a weapon. In your head, it was a thing of death."

Dean looks away from Edward, squinting up into the late morning sun. Dean is beautiful in the sunlight, his face set into compassion so clearly. Sam understands exactly what Dean is trying, with halting but genuine eloquence, to tell Edward. Sam could make it easier for both of them, but he doesn't. It's possible that some things should be hard.

"I never intended to hurt anyone," Edward says, but Sam can see the trickle of understanding across his face.

"That part don't matter. Whether you would have or not, it's not important. That's not why I'm talking to you. This ain't about your heart or your soul or whatever it is you guys try and keep clean. You didn't do nothing wrong. Not yet. But you're their leader, whatever you guys call it, you're their Priest. And they all saw you reach for it, to use it for a weapon."

"No," Edward says, but there's no force behind it.

"I can't let you have it back," Dean says, and sounds genuinely sorrowful. "It ain't holy anymore. Not for any of you. And I'm telling you 'cause you need your coven to help. I don't know the things to do, any of the spells or rituals, but you gotta undo whatever happened in your head that made you reach for the holiest article of your faith as a weapon."

"We can cleanse it," Edward says, but he raises his hand to his face and covers his eyes.

"It's not the knife that needs it," Dean says with quiet care. "The knife is fine. You never touched it. It's you, it's your whole coven. If any of you guys use this knife, it'll twist everything you try to do. The rest of 'em probably won't even know until it's too late, and if Claire goes where you lead... You'll wind up eating away at all the good around you. And you guys are strong. That's only gonna go up, get worse. It doesn't have to be like that. That's not who you want to be."

Edward's hand falls away from his face, and now he looks a little surprised but also less afraid, and he's looking intently at Dean. "So you do care if he's good or evil," Edward says.

"Of course, I care," Dean almost whispers. His hands twist into fists around the silver knife. Sam watches his blood spatter onto the porch. "I would do _anything_ to stop that happening, but I'll never, never kill Sam. There is nothing he can do, there will never come a time that I won't gladly die trying to save him." Dean's blood sizzles on the blade of the knife. Sam can smell it cooking. "I never said I didn't care. I said I _wouldn't leave_. I won't give up on him." 

"Dean," Sam says, because he isn't sure what is going on, exactly, but he knows he can smell Dean's blood in the air, and he isn't a witch, he can't feel that kind of magic, but he can feel something.

The door opens, and the rest of the coven files out. Claire hovers inside the doorway, and Chris hovers a couple of feet from Claire, but the rest of them walk to the porch rail and line up, leaning over in tandem, all in a synchronized line like they're the Rockettes or something. Their faces are solemn, but there is no confusion in them. This is their kind of magic. They merely came to the call of it.

"It's his Oath to make," Edward says.

Abruptly, Sam knows exactly what is happening, has read this in some book or another, and he steps back away from Dean, his arms crossed over his chest.

Dean watches him do it without comprehension, but he says, "Whatever it is you're thinkin', Sam, I'm not doing anything to you against your will."

And it's so obvious, Sam already knew that, and hates the way Dean's face looks when he says it, the grief that Sam would ever think otherwise.

Edward says, "The Oath is made. Sam's blood will make it stronger, freely given, but it won't change the truth of his promise."

It's Chris who says, "You should do it." Sam looks at him, but Chris is looking at Claire, and Sam recognizes his expression. He's seen it on Dean's face a hundred times. "You should let him. If you were him and he was you, wouldn't you make exactly the same vow?"

Sam would, of course. He still wishes Dean would promise to do it, if it ever comes to that, because he trusts Dean to know when and how, trusts Dean like he trusts no one else in the world, to make the decision if Sam himself can no longer see that it needs to be made, but he understands why he won't, why he can't. That maybe he never could have, but now, with the last month behind them, Dean will never be able to.

Edward is right. It isn't Sam's decision, and it never has been. It's Dean's.

He steps back up to Dean and shrugs off his jacket and pulls his shirt up over his head.

Dean licks his lips. "I don't know what to do," he says.

"It's ritual magic," Sam says. "All you need to know is what it looks like for this part."

"The magic is already crafted," Edward agrees. "The Oath only works if you say what you mean and you mean what you say. This is just an affirmation." Claire hands a book to Chris, and Chris hands it to Edward. Edward begins flipping through it rapidly.

"Of what?" Dean asks, but there is dawning hope on his face, and something that looks like joy. Sam isn't sure. He hasn't seen joy on Dean's face in so long that he can't remember what it looks like.

"Of his whole-hearted consent," tall girl says. "That not only does he accept your promise, but that he will never hinder you in its pursuit. That he will help you if he can."

"Sammy," Dean says, sounding a little helpless.

Edward flips the book around and holds it open for Dean. "Can you do this?" he asks. 

"Not that one," Sam says, knowing on sight that it's the simplest spell they have that means yes, chosen because Dean isn't a witch. "The hard one. The strongest binding you've got. Solid. He can do it."

Edward looks at Sam for a long moment, but Sam looks at Dean. Dean is looking back, his face a question.

"This?" Edward asks, and Sam glances over. It isn't as elaborate as their bracelets, but it's complex. Sam nods. Edward's eyebrows arch faintly with surprise, but he just holds the book for Dean to look at.

Dean skims the drawing once, and then leans in and studies it closely. "I been drawing shit like this since before I could write English," Dean says almost absently. "Just hold it still."

"Over his heart," Claire says, as though Dean would ever put it anywhere else.

Dean turns back to Sam and looks him in the eyes. "I gotta be sure," he says. "You gotta say yes." 

Sam doesn't, actually. For the ritual, his intent is enough. "Yes," Sam says anyway, because it matters to Dean. 

It starts to rain. As one, the coven looks up at the sky. A stag comes around the corner of the house and stops on the sidewalk leading to the porch. Someone, or maybe several someones, makes a sigh that sounds like wind.

"It's best on the naked earth," Edward says, and Sam takes the three steps necessary to take them off the porch and past the sidewalk. The coven stretches to follow them, stringing out along the length of the porch. Edward is standing right beside Dean, his five-century-old book open in the rain.

Dean puts one hand on Sam's chest. Sam can see him framing the spell in his mind, bending it around the shape of Sam's muscle and bone. After a little while, he looks up. "Yes?" he asks.

"Yes," Sam agrees again, and Dean leans forward with no apparent concern for the company, and puts his lips on Sam's chest, tucks a kiss next to the thin web of skin between thumb and forefinger. "Yes," Sam says again when Dean straightens. 

"Be still, Sammy," Dean says, and sets the knife to Sam's skin. It hurts, but Sam is too distracted to pay much attention to the pain. He can feel the magic, the low pulse of it channeled from Dean, through the knife, and into Sam's body. He's never felt anything like it. It's hot and thick, but not smothering. It's an open hand inside his skin.

This is what it feels like when it's voluntary, Sam realizes, a little startled. When it's not an attack or a trap or an illusion. This is what it feels like when everyone present is a willing participant.

The coven are holding hands, the entire line of them. Claire is on the far end, and Chris has one hand curled carefully around a lock of her hair, his other hand in Cecily's. They must have worked that out through trial and error of the most difficult kind. Helen has a hand on the back of Edward's neck, and Edward has his free hand out, not touching Dean, but waiting.

They're willing, Sam understands, to put the whole force of their power behind Dean's Oath, all of their collective Faith. These seven essential strangers, men and women whose lives Dean had explicitly threatened, a whole coven of white witches who live deliberately in the light, all of them casting the purity of their souls behind Dean's untried blood magic with absolute conviction that it is _good_.

Sam's heart is pounding, but his mind feels sharp and clear, all of his senses wide open to the world. He can smell the rain and Dean's shampoo and his own blood. He can smell the wild, woodland scent of the stag.

The Hart.

Sam holds out a hand, and it comes to him, pressing its neck against his palm. With its antlers its taller than Sam, and he has no doubt that Dean had summoned it, that Dean _called it forth_ , with his blood and his will and his truth, with a knife that is only holy if you truly believe that it is not a weapon, with the magic of a faith that Dean doesn't follow.

Sam knows that he could never have used that knife. He is unable to make the distinction that Dean makes without the need to think about it, and Sam has no truth to offer, no imperative to demand, no faith in the faith of others. He will never be what Dean is, effortlessly.

This is an event forged solely of the best things Dean has to give, and is bent entirely toward the one thing Dean wants above all else.

Sam is filled with a surety that is nearly sublime.

He had been wrong to ever ask Dean to be the means to end Sam's life, wrong to have ever tried to set them in opposition that way. They can only succeed if they are striving toward the same end, and Dean has been fighting to save Sam without his help. Sam had already planned for defeat, had asked Dean to believe that the loss was acceptable, and Dean doesn't work that way. Dean will never believe that they can't do anything as long as they both want it badly enough to give everything for it. 

It doesn't even matter if it's true. It only matters that it should be, that they _should_ be as enduring and relentless as Dean knows that they are.

Sam will put his soul in the hands of Dean's conviction.

This is the right thing. It should have always been this.

"In the center," Edward says quietly, "You need a symbol for the two of you. It doesn't matter what it is. Only that it means the two of you, in your mind. Before you set it, you need--"

"I know what to do," Dean says with certainty that Sam doesn't doubt. Dean may not know specific rituals, but he understands the symbols the same way that Sam does. They aren't witches, but they may be the closest thing to hands-on broad-spectrum experts of the supernatural in the world.

Sam has had the thought before, but it's always been with a sense of the surreal, always tinged with a feeling of loss at what they might have been if they weren't who they are.

This time, it's a comfort. Now, it is nothing but good to know their place.

Dean finishes the symbol, Sam feels it with a little snap, like static electricity.

It doesn't hurt itself, but it seems to bring the actual pain sharply to the forefront of Sam's mind, and it hurts a lot. It feels exactly like Dean has carved a spell the size of his hand into Sam's chest. It isn't the worst thing Sam has ever felt, but it hurts, and it won't be undone like the nicks Claire had made to their palms. Sam has to keep bleeding for this.

Dean stares at Sam's chest for several seconds, and then turns his whole body toward the Hart. "Thank you," he says simply, his gratitude naked in his voice and on his face, and Sam knows that there is a ritual for this, too, but Dean's intent is enough. This is as much Dean-craft as witchcraft, now.

The Hart lifts its chin, and Dean slices its throat, two fast, deep cuts to either side of its strong, tawny neck. Dean holds the blade under the fall of blood for a moment, letting it pour over his hand, and then shifts the knife to his other hand and cuts a deep slice into the bloody heel of his palm.

The Hart falls slowly out from under Sam's hand, first down to the knees of its forelegs, and then almost gently onto its side.

Dean doesn't even look at it. He puts the knife back to Sam's chest and makes a series of tiny, deep cuts, and then reaches for Sam with his bloody hand.

Edward touches two fingers to Dean's forehead, and Dean jerks, and his hand jams hard against Sam's chest, and Sam wraps both hands around Dean's wrist without thought and holds him there, and it's a good thing because Dean's back bows, he rises up to his toes, his head snapping back, and he screams out: "Samuel Campbell Winchester!" Sam feels it wash over him, a painless electric flood, feels his hair blowing back from his face, the force of Dean's will rushing through him, and he lets it, throws himself wide open for it, and feels his own body arch and rise and shudder.

The rain stops. Sam can hear somebody mowing their lawn, there is a car driving by, children are laughing somewhere, and Dean sags forward against Sam's chest. Sam catches him and drags him in, and Dean takes Sam's face with bloody hands and kisses him with urgent gratitude, and Sam kisses him back the same way. Then Dean is just holding him, his hands on Sam's neck and cradling the back of his head, pressing his forehead down against Dean's shoulder. Sam has both arms around Dean's back, his palms secure against Dean's essential solidity, and he can still smell blood and shampoo and sweat, but beneath it he can smell Dean, and the rest of it doesn't matter.

"A month ago, you wouldn't have believed me, even if I said yes," Sam says to Dean's shoulder.

"A month ago, you wouldn't have said yes," Dean says to Sam's cheek.

"Behold!" Chris says.

"Mother _fuck_ ," Dean snarls in aggravation. "Can we catch a break here?"

"It doesn't look that way," Sam says, and they move apart and turn to face the coven.

This time, it only lasts about four seconds. When Chris' hand falls, he staggers a little, and Claire takes a step back. Edward wraps both hands around Chris' shoulders to steady him. "You," is all Chris says. He sways on his feet, and Cecily fits herself up under his arm.

"Okay," Edward says. "Everybody back inside. Amelia, get something to cover the Hart." Tall girl darts back into the house, and Sam makes a note of her name.

Dean blinks down at the dead stag. "I," he says. "I thought that might disappear."

Edward says, "I would have said it couldn't be done without the ritual. We'll honor it for you."

Amelia comes out and throws a quilt over the Hart.

Sam can still hear someone mowing their lawn, distant cars, children. Somewhere close, a phone is ringing. There is deer blood soaking through the left leg of Sam's jeans, and Chris is staring at Sam and Dean with something like wonder. The silver knife is stuck in Dean's back pocket hilt first, the blade poking out. Amelia goes back to stand with her coven, all seven of them watching Sam and Dean with wise eyes.

Sam and Dean's shoulders are touching. Dean has a possessive hand ringed around Sam's wrist. Sam can feel blood and rain dripping down his naked chest. He is giving some serious thought to making a run for the Impala.

"Come back inside," Edward says.

Sam looks a question at Dean, but is immediately distracted. There are two fingerprints of blood outlined on Dean's forehead. Sam can see the ridges and whorls clearly.

"You blood bound your whole coven to _Dean_?" Sam says without looking away from Dean, so shocked he can't even think about it in any kind of rational terms.

Dean's face goes slack with surprise.

"To both of you, really," Edward says without sounding worried about it. "To his promise."

"Why would you do that?" Dean asks with baffled astonishment.

"Why did you come here?" Edward says. "Why do you do hunt? Why did you take me aside to tell me something I should have already known?"

Dean opens his mouth, and then hesitates with it half open. Finally, he says, "You guys were trying to do the right thing. You fucked it up pretty big, but you were really trying, and that's not nothing." 

It only really addresses the last question specifically, but it implies the answers to the rest of it. Dean tries to do the right thing. Dean doesn't have to like someone to try to save them.

Then Dean asks, "How did you let blood?"

Edward tips his head and doesn't quite smile. "I bit myself," he says, and holds out his fingers. Sam suspects that it had hurt like hell. "We're going to have to do some purification before we can make a new knife."

Dean snorts in amusement, and Sam elbows him.

"Dude," Dean objects.

"Don't be a dick," Sam says.

"Come back inside," Edward repeats.

Dean cocks his head. "I don't think so. It's just gonna be load of mystical shit that I don't care about the details of, and a pile of questions nobody can answer about how that shoulda been impossible, and I got my fill of that today already. Me and Sam still got work to do." He looks at each of them, though, and half-smiles. "I probably won't kill you if I see you again," he tells them.

Claire snorts at that. "You're both covered in blood," she points out.

"We got clothes and wet wipes in the car," Dean says easily.

"Sam needs a bandage," Claire says.

"The first aid kit in our car is probably twice as big as the closest emergency room," Sam says wryly.

Claire blinks, and then laughs. "Your lives," she says, still half-laughing, rolling her eyes.

"Tell me about it," Sam says, and he's totally with Dean. He knows what Dean just did, and he wants all the details, but he can call Claire later and get them. He can look most of them up for himself. He recognizes what they've done, but he really, really does not want to be here anymore. "We'll call," he tells Edward. "Write down your questions, what answers you have, what you guess. We'll talk, but not now. Things keep happening." He could probably string together a more coherent explanation, but he doesn't bother. His chest hurts, and he can see that they get it.

He looks at Chris, though. "What did you see?"

Chris says tiredly, "I'm really ready for you guys to go." But he's smiling a little, and there is no malice in it.

"Hey, at least we ain't doing this with guns this time," Dean says philosophically.

Chris just looks at Dean. He's not an eye-rolling kind of guy, but Sam is sure he's thinking about it. He looks back at Sam. "I saw Claire holding Dean's hand. I saw her smiling. That's all."

"Where?" Sam asks, and ruthlessly squashes the desperate hope coiling suddenly in his chest. "When?"

"Here," Chris says. "Right now." He looks at the sun in the sky. "I could see Edward's blood on his forehead."

Claire looks at Chris. Chris just nods.

The coven parts carefully to allow her to pass.

"I'm really not that keen on my eyeballs bleedin'," Dean says, watching her, but he doesn't move away.

"Do you want to know?" she asks.

"Please, Dean," Sam says, because he can't say anything else. Dean looks at him.

"You won't be able to hide anything," Claire says. "It doesn't work like that. I can't direct it, really. It directs itself."

Dean is still looking at Sam.

"Please," Sam says.

Dean holds out his hand. Claire looks at it for a moment, and then takes it. They both close their eyes.

"...do _anything_ to stop that happening, but I'll never, never kill Sam," she says, and it is startling because Sam remembers it, but more because of Claire's voice, the cadence and inflection are completely Dean's, identical down to the desperate, aching sincerity. They are both still and almost expressionless, their faces at ease while they are both in Dean's mind.

"...not a chance in hell, you dumb motherfucker..." she says, Dean, tightly furious, but unafraid, and then it is a stream of words, just enough pause that Sam can string together sentence fragments as much from long familiarity with Dean's rhythm and tone as because they make any sense.

"... no time like the present..." is bright with violent glee, Sam can almost see the look on Dean's face,

"...the whole reason, there isn't anything else..." is soft and scared,

"...yeah, like that, God, Sam..." so hot and needful that Sam's face blazes with it,

"...drop!..." familiar, Sam has heard it so many times,

"...to give you somethin'. And I want you to tell me..." calm and purposeful,

"...you, Sammy, you were like a fucking ninja..." full of hilarity and approval,

"...hands are cold, you asshole..." grumbling laughter,

"...smell like ten thousand dead warthogs wrapped in rotten seaweed and sprayed by a skunk..." disgusted laughter,

"...touched somethin', didn't you..." mocking laughter,

"...Sam..." exasperation,

"...Sam..." pleasure,

"...Sam..." laughter,

"...Sam..." amazement,

"...Sam..."

They both open their eyes, but neither of them let go.

"...every day of my fucking life, Sammy," is simple and forthright and real. 

Sam has never wanted to hear the beginning of a sentence more.

Claire smiles at Dean, and lets go of his hand. "I see you happy," she says. "There is some pain, and your life will never be anything but hard, but you are happy."

"With Sam," Dean says, like he can't help it, and Sam's chest aches with it.

"With Sam," Claire promises gently.

"The future is mutable," Chris says softly. "But as of right now, this is the path you're on."

Dean turns, hand outstretched, and Sam doesn't try to shift, so Dean's hand comes to rest right on top of the still-bleeding spell. Sam winces, and Dean pulls his hand back at once. "Shit, Sammy!" he says, and reaches with the other hand and does the exact same thing.

"Ow," Sam says.

Dean looks alarmed.

"You set the spell with your own blood," Claire tells Dean, unconcerned. Dean's hand is still pressed up against Sam's seeping wound, but apparently this is not a problem. "You're going to be drawn to it for the rest of your life, but especially while it's still bleeding." Then, at a teasing whisper, she adds, "Try not to get anything in it," and it's all worth it, because Dean blushes scarlet and seems genuinely speechless. Then she cocks her head a little, and says, "Actually, no. Definitely get stuff in it. From both of you, if possible." She peers at Sam's chest. "It will bleed for the rest of the day, until the moon rises. You should have time to--"

"We have to go!" Dean almost shouts.

"Dean, we're pagans," Edward says in a low, soothing tone that Sam knows from experience won't do any good. "Everyone in the coven has had sex with everyone else. We don't judge."

Dean turns around and walks toward the Impala determinedly.

Sam, totally inappropriate hilarity bubbling behind his breastbone, says, "He's not usually shy." Claire laughs out loud.

The coven circles Sam, but they don't ask any questions. They just touch him, each of them with one gentle hand, even Claire.

"I'm glad you came," Claire says in a low, fierce voice.

"We're glad," Edward says, and Sam can see it on their faces, all of them.

Sam has only one question. "There are ten people outside on this street right now," he says. "That's not taking into account the number of people who drove by. How did we ritually sacrifice a Hart on your front lawn, how did Dean work a magic that big, without anyone even noticing?"

Edward says, "I don't know, Sam. The earth here is blessed, my home is protected in every way the coven together can call forth, but it doesn't make us invisible. I don't know how he could do it at all, and I don't know why it was unseen."

But Chris says, "It was Dean. It was his Will." Chris hands Sam his shirt and jacket.

Sam nods. It makes as much sense as anything else has today. He glances over his shoulder at Dean. He has the trunk open, and is wrapping the knife in something. "I have to go," he says.

The coven's hands fall away.

"We would be your allies," Edward says. "We offer you haven."

Sam understands the offer, and is humbled by it. "We accept," he says. "This has been one of the weirdest days of my life, but I know what you did for us. Dean will probably never understand it, but he gets it well enough. We owe you."

"No," Claire says. "We are in balance, as we should be." She sounds sure.

Then she reaches for Sam, and Sam pulls her into another hug, heedless of the pain of the spell as she is heedless of his blood soaking into her shirt. "You should visit," she says again.

This time, Sam says, "When we come this way again, we will."

She kisses his cheek and lets him go.

Sam climbs into the car without putting his shirt back on. A minute or so later, Dean swings into the driver's seat.

"I don't want to talk about it," Dean says immediately.

"It isn't even noon yet," Sam comments.

Dean looks over at him for a long moment. Then he starts the car and drives them, only a little recklessly, back to the motel.


	9. 9

Dean leaves blood tacky smears around the steering wheel, and they both leave smears of blood all over the front seat, but Dean doesn't mention it at all when they get out. He heads straight for their room, and Sam follows with full awareness of Dean's intent, even if he isn't sure of the shape it will take.

Sam isn't sure it's even possible to make the spell stronger, but he's not certain that it isn't either, and it's not like it's going to be a hardship, either way.

He is still surprised, however, when Dean shuts the motel room door behind them, catches Sam around both biceps, and swings him around, slamming him hard against the door, and then pulls him back just to slam him against the door again. He feels a little stunned and uncertain, but beneath that is some kind of tidal rush of heat, something that hits him low in the belly and rushes outward like a gentle explosion. His breath leaves him the second time his back hits the door, not a sigh or a huff, but somewhere between the two, and a small sound escapes with it that Sam doesn't know how to classify.

Dean drags him downward, both hands still biting into Sam's upper arms, the bare skin of Sam's back skidding down the cool wood of the door, and Sam doesn't resist at all, just lets Dean kick his knees wide and shove his hips back, not with his hands, which are still around Sam's arms, but with the toe of one boot, a blunt-sharp point of impact that makes Sam blink with surprise and a twist of arousal that he has no idea the cause of. Dean sinks down between his wide-open thighs and lets go of one of Sam's arms to jerk his jeans open, followed directly by his own jeans.

Dean doesn't say a word. He looks at Sam, at his face and then at the spell still seeping blood down his chest, and then just jerks Sam up a few inches and shoves his knees under Sam's ass, levering them both up enough so that they can tilt their hips together without much effort. Sam's biceps actually ache under the pressure of the tips of each of Dean's fingers, but the feel of it is distant. Dean releases his arms, and uses one hand to gather their cocks together. Sam isn't entirely hard, his chest hurts and he is willing, but not quite there until his cock slides against Dean's, and is immediately half-slick with Dean's precome. Sam shudders and hardens, certain that will never stop being blisteringly, hopelessly hot. Then Dean braces his forearm against Sam's chest, pinning him back against the door, the thickest part of his forearm pressed so hard to the bloody spell that Sam lets out a little cry of pain.

Dean looks at him, and it isn't that Dean doesn't know he's hurting Sam, it isn't that Dean wants to hurt Sam, it isn't even that 'for your own good' expression that Dean gets when he's stitching Sam up. Dean just ignores it entirely, as though it's unimportant.

Sam has softened a little again, a response to the pain, but Dean ignores that, too. He strokes them together, eyes on Sam, watching Sam's face expectantly.

There is a moment where Sam almost says something that is not quite an objection, but more like a request for an explanation, but then doesn't because he can see that Dean already knows. Pain is pain for Sam. He isn't wired like Dean is for pain, and Sam can get right on board with biting and rough sex and small doses of deliberately inflicted pain, but this is not that. He has an open wound, not just one, but dozens, he is carved up so thoroughly that his skin is clinging to muscle by nothing but thin connective tissue and subcutaneous fat in some places, and it hurts. The pressure Dean is exerting makes it almost unbearably painful, and Dean knows that.

Dean is doing it on purpose, and Sam has a brief, searing flash of anger that is at least half fear, and tenses, his body ready to effect escape, and Dean lets go of their cocks to grasp Sam's shoulder and slam it back against the door again, hard enough to jolt Sam, but not to really hurt him.

Dean doesn't say anything, but leaves his hand on Sam's shoulder for several seconds, which means 'Don't move.' Sam is clear on that.

Sam blinks, he can almost feel the expression on his face, baffled and pleading, and Dean lets go of his shoulder and curls it around Sam's cock without Dean's this time, and begins to work on Sam's cock again, which is less than half hard now. _What is going on?_ he wants to ask. _What do you want?_

But as soon as Sam thinks it, he knows. Dean wants him pinned against the door. Dean wants him not to move. Dean wants him hard.

It isn't that Dean is hurting Sam on purpose. It's that Dean wants something _regardless_ of the fact that it hurts Sam.

And that does it for him. That does it for Sam so hard and so sharp that he feels something clench somewhere in his mind, a tight coil of dangerous understanding, and he is immediately hard in Dean's grip. His head jerks back against the door with a little hollow sounding thud and he shouts something, he doesn't know what.

He feels it when Dean adjusts to get both of their cocks back into his hand, but what he really feels is Dean's voice, a deep, dusky growl, "Yeah, Sammy. Just let me." 

And Sam does. He is aching with need, he feels almost electrified with it, but he holds himself back against the door and is still under the pain of Dean's arm braced across his chest and the pleasure of Dean's cock sliding against his own in the curl of Dean's hand. He can feel both of those things, and his chest doesn't hurt any less, but it is endurable, and it doesn't stop the hot spiking pleasure from building in his balls and belly and at the base of his spine, and that hot, new place in his mind feels like it's twisting with it, it is a pinprick, a mote, a thing so small it is only an idea, but it is something Sam wants so badly that it's possible he would do anything for it. The pleasure and the pain are in some kind of impossible balance, they coexist, and pain-tears gather in his eyes and spill over his cheeks and he's breathing in tiny, helpless hitches of breath, and Dean is watching his face with hungry want that is different from what Dean looks like when Sam is hurting him, but is no less real.

When Dean leans in close, lips at Sam's ear, and says, "Bite my neck as hard as you can," Sam sets his teeth to the join of Dean's neck and shoulder and does exactly as instructed, he bites and tastes blood, and Dean lets out a harsh cry and comes immediately, and Sam comes as soon as Dean does, like that is all he had been waiting for all along, and the pinprick of possibility in his mind shatters outward through his whole body, and he knows he screams and he thinks he might be speaking and he feels that Dean is holding him up as Sam's body curls forward instinctively, as though trying to protect itself as it roars through him.

Sam is stunned with it. The world is a distant blur.

Sam isn't sure when Dean moved his arm away from Sam's chest, but he's abruptly being dragged away from the door and maneuvered down onto his back, and he watches almost academically, feeling as though he's in some way disconnected from his body, as Dean, his palm upturned into a cup, leans forward with one shoulder over his hand. Blood drips slowly from the bite on Dean's shoulder into Dean's hand.

Then Dean frames the spell between thumb and forefinger, just as he had before he had started it, and spills the handful of Dean's blood and their semen directly onto the spell. He presses his other hand against Sam's chest as soon as it's empty, making a square set of levies with his fingers.

It isn't the same rush of will it had been before, it isn't external, Dean moving through him. This is something from inside Sam, something tidal and immense, and Sam moans at it, it is bright with sensation so varied that he can't define any one thing. He feels it break against the inside of his skin and then soak back into him, the whole thing so quick as to almost be instantaneous, and he knows it is magic only because it can't be anything else, and he thinks it qualifies as sex magic because what else could it be?

Sam doesn't realize his eyes are closed until he has to open them to look at Dean. 

Dean is watching him intently, but he's smiling, too, so whatever Sam had felt had either been visible, or had been in some other way tangible to Dean.

Sam has so many question that they are engaged in an all out brawl for precedence in his cerebral cortex, but for a few seconds he just smiles, because Dean is smiling at him.

"I think," Sam says finally, his voice a little wobbly, "you might be a natural witch."

Sam sees a hint of a smirk, the normal precursor to Dean saying something eyerollingly obnoxious, but it vanishes before it's fully realized. "I couldn't be a 'good' witch," Dean says instead, his eyes wise. "Not really. So it don't matter."

By which Dean means he couldn't be a white witch, and he's right. Not with their lives. And most other forms of witchcraft are even uglier than what they already do.

Sam thinks about that for a while. He can feel Dean looking at his chest, probably looking for any signs of further damage, but he ignores it. It still hurts, but it's not as bad, and he feels more awake and aware now than he had on the drive back to the motel. Sam doesn't know a lot about sex magic, really, and most of what he knows ties into regular witchcraft, but he's pretty sure it's normal to feel pleasantly energized afterward.

"How long have you known?" he asks, uncertain if this falls into the category of talking-about-feelings or talking-about-work.

Apparently, it's work.

"You musta been about eight," Dean says easily. He braces an elbow under him on the floor, and hooks a thigh over the top of one of Sam's. Dean is fully dressed, and Sam is still wearing jeans. They both still have their shoes on. Their cocks are both out, limp and a little sticky and smeared with blood from Dean's hands, but this seems weirdly not weird to Sam. "I'm guessing it was a puberty thing. I sorta... felt it like a tickle a few times when I went on safe jobs with Dad. I didn't know what the hell it was until the time Dad pissed off that warlock out in Palm Springs. You remember that?"

Sam does; he was nine. "Dad came home cursed," Sam says, nodding. It hadn't been anything horrific. Sam remembers thinking it was a little funny at the time, but he was nine. His father fumbling every weapon he picked up as though his hands were covered in grease was like slapstick at nine.

"I could feel it," Dean says. "But it was more like I could smell it, like a bad smell you can't really tell what it is."

"Did Dad know?" Sam is genuinely curious about this, but at least half of his brain is skipping back through memories of when Dean might have saved their asses because he could feel something, or smell it. He remembers walking up to Edward's house a few hours ago, the way Dean had said, _"Warlock,"_ immediately, and Sam had assumed he'd reached that conclusion the same way Sam had.

"Yeah. I thought, y'know, cool. I'd have some mojo of my own, I could do stuff that didn't count on my aim and my fists. When I told 'im, I thought he'd think the same thing."

"And he didn't," Sam guesses without having to guess.

"He took off for a few days, left us in that one motel with the pool shaped like a bird."

"Flamingo," Sam corrects automatically.

"Yeah. Anyways, when he got back, he said I couldn't do it."

"Helpful," Sam says, only half-amused.

"It wasn't like that," Dean says, and casually bumps his lips into Sam's jaw. "He explained as much as he could to a kid, as much as I could really understand." He seems unaware that Sam is tripping over that little, absent-minded kiss and falling over the realization that this is what constitutes pillow talk, for them. Sam kind of wants to laugh and kind of wants to see if he can manage some kind of casually intimate gesture back without spooking Dean. "And," he says, and looks Sam in the face, "he told me I had to pick. Couldn't do both." Dean doesn't actually shrug, but Sam hears the shrug in his voice. "So that was no contest." 

Also, at thirteen, being a white witch must have sounded like infinitely boring torture to Dean. Hell, it probably still sounds like infinitely boring torture to Dean. He had as much as said so to Edward.

"You never said," Sam says, which is as close to an accusation as he can make right now. Things are not precarious between them, not really, but any conversation with Dean that involves anything about how he might feel is littered with pitfalls.

Dean is quiet for long enough that Sam begins to worry he's stumbled into one of them.

Finally, he says, "You want to know all about stuff." The phrasing is worrisome, but Dean's tone is still fairly easy. "Around the time I hit seventeen, I knew enough about how it all worked that I coulda done stuff, even though I never had. You know how it works with this job. You pick shit up, you can't even help it. It's like if you spent a buncha time with Amish guys, you'd end up knowing how to make fucking butter." Sam stares at him, boggled. "I mean, like, even if you never fucking _make_ butter, there's just always somebody making butter three feet away, so. You just figure it out, even if you're really trying not to."

"Butter," Sam says dubiously.

"I got a point here," Dean says irritably, which, combined with the butter metaphor, is adorable. Sam will never ever tell, of course. "I know enough about it to know I shouldn't fuck with it. But if I knew more, and we had a job, and it mattered, or we got hung up and I was frustrated, or if something happened to you, I'd use it. I can't just know stuff, like you can. and I don't really believe what you gotta believe to be a good witch, so the best thing was to not know enough to do truly awful shit, and if I told you, you were gonna learn everything there ever was to know about every kinda witch that ever walked the planet, and then when it mattered, or we got hung up and I was frustrated or whatever, you could tell me exactly how to do shit I got no business screwing around with."

"So, you didn't tell me for your own good?" Sam asks, amused. It's partly the butter thing, which is seriously hilarious, but it's also that it actually makes a lot of sense, in Dean-logic. Dean isn't wrong about this. He's maybe not entirely right, either, but he's not wrong.

Dean hesitates, and then says, "For _our_ own good. Claire's coven is right about that. Even if all you did was tell me how, you gotta own some of that shit when it hits the fan, Sammy."

Dean doesn't say that he hadn't wanted that for Sam, hadn't wanted to taint him by association, but he doesn't have to.

"Then the blood oath was seriously an accident?" Sam asks, though not because he doubts it. Really, he wants to know something else entirely, but he's building up to it.

"I mean, I knew it was possible, read it or heard it someplace, but yeah. It was an accident." Dean looks a little bemused at the idea. He makes a little snorting sound. "It's like the weirdest fucking kind of random good karma." 

"But the spell," Sam says, more a prompt than a question.

Dean's eyes fall to it immediately, and he raises his hand and just hovers it over Sam's chest. "You said yes," Dean says, without looking away. "I already did it, couldn't undo it, and." He looks at Sam a little helplessly. "I wouldn't have asked, Sammy. Fuck, I wouldn't have even known I could. But. You said yes." He still looks as though it surprises him a little. "If a whole coven of white witches figured it was a good plan, and you said yes, there was no way in hell I wasn't gonna do it all the way, make it strong as it could be."

"But you understand what it means," Sam says, and that's not really a question either.

"I was gonna spend the rest of my life trying to keep you Sam with or without a spell," Dean says matter of factly. "Nothing was compelling me before, and I won't ever need it to. This is just hot sauce, Sammy."

Sam snorts, because it's just like Dean to liken magically driven supernatural aid to condiments, and Dean grins faintly.

It's short lived. "Is it...?" Dean asks, hand still hovering. "Does it...?"

Sam speaks Dean, so he isn't confused. "Hurts like a bitch," he says honestly. "But I'm okay with that."

It's a very simplified way of saying that he has no regrets, that he is happy and grateful, that he feels blessed, one which will be easier for Dean to hear than the more elaborate declaration.

"We should go talk to Homunculus guy," Dean says, which translates to: Awesome, let's do something manly to counteract the way we had an entire conversation right here in broad daylight.

Sam smirks a little. "Five more minutes," he says. "My legs still feel like Jello." Which translates to: You're an awesome lay, so you have to talk to me for five more minutes.

Dean gives him a suspicious look, which means he gets the gist of the translation, but his ego is still stroked, so he's going to let it slide.

Sam is pretty sure he can condense his two actual questions into five minutes.

"Did you hear about the sex magic 'someplace'?" he asks.

Dean gives him a long look. "I know it happens, I know some witches use it, but I never actually heard anything, no." Dean looks extremely pleased with himself. "It was Claire. I mean, I never would have thought of it, but once I did, why the hell not? It's inside the no harm rule, and even if it didn't do a damned thing, at least we got orgasms out of it."

"Bullshit!" Sam says, and he is genuinely surprised. Out of everything Dean has managed to do today, that is the one thing he'd actually seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

"Nope. Truth," Dean says smugly.

Sam gropes for some orderly way to ask all the things he wants to know about it, because it had worked. It had definitely worked, and not only that, he is certain some of it had been deliberate, it had felt ritualistic, as though it had to be done a certain way, and that Dean knew what that way was. "How," Sam says, "How...?" but he can't really get past that.

Dean sits up. Sam misses the warmth of him along his side immediately, misses the weight of Dean's leg thrown casually over his thigh. Then Dean grabs one of Sam's arms and tugs, and Sam sits up as well. Dean tucks himself back into his jeans and zips up, and Sam does the same. The change in relative position makes blood drip down Sam's chest again. When he glances down at it, all the can really see is the raw outline of the spell, and the way the whole left side of his chest is covered in blood in various stages of drying. He looks like the victim of an axe murderer. He's pretty sure you can't bleed to death from a white magic spell, and he's more seeping blood than actively bleeding, but it still looks really awful. The waist of his jeans on that side is black with blood.

They aren't quite facing one another, which is probably what Dean had been going for, but they're not quite side by side either. They're both facing the door, but angled slightly toward each other.

"Ritual magic contains predictable elements," Dean says, sounding weirdly like Sam, actually. He's looking somewhere between the door and Sam, and if it weren't the middle of the day, Sam is sure this is a conversation Dean would like to have in bed, at night, without the chance of accidentally looking at each other. "If it's sex magic, it makes sense that the primary element is semen, for guys. Magic in general is made more powerful by blood. Yours was already fresh and flowing. Mixing mine with it couldn't hurt, and since the original spell had to have my blood, it seemed like it could be as important as yours was. The thing that really matters, though, is that you gotta want it. To make the spell work, you gotta want it, and the ritual part is mostly just there to help you focus on what you want, or with a coven like Claire's, to help you make your magic stronger as long as everybody wants the same thing. That's why people who don't got a drop of magic between 'em can sometimes make ritual magic work, and why people who're practically overflowing with it sometimes can't. Bob, who's supposed to be thinking about summoning shit, is actually wondering if he could score with the witch in the pink babydoll t-shirt." He glances over at Sam for a second with a little smirk.

Sam smiles back on auto-pilot. He is quietly, stealthily amazed. Dean had not been kidding. He may not know how much salt to add or the exact amount of time he needs to churn, but if he had to, he could make butter.

"Maybe we could have just jerked off and slapped it on there, and it would have worked fine," he says, looking between Sam and the door again. "But that spell, that's the work of you and me. And I felt that work, I _did_ that work. I put a knife to you and I cut you up, and if I was gonna ever do that, then I wasn't gonna half-ass the rest of it. So I had you bite me for my blood, because that is something I want, Sam. and I made you let me take what I wanted from you, because that's as close as I could come to what you want before moonrise. So we both came doing the things we both wanted, and that's as powerful a want as I know how to make that way."

There is no way for him to tell Dean how impressed Sam is. It would just irritate Dean, both because he can't really take compliments with grace, and because he won't believe Sam complimenting his intellect anyway. But Sam can't help it. Someone should tell Dean, and if Sam doesn't, who will? "It was brilliant," he says, which is ambiguous enough that Dean can pretend it's about the sex if he wants to.

Dean turns to look at him. "Never let me do it again," he says, absolutely serious. "This one thing, this one time, and I don't regret it, Sammy. I said I'd do anything, and I meant it. But I don't do this shit for a reason, and I know you understand the slippery slope. You spent the last few months freaking out about being on it; I don't want to be there any more than you do. So if you gotta know everything there is to know, you don't tell me any of it. I ain't built to be a good witch, so I can't be a witch at all, even if I could be good at it."

"I understand," Sam says, and he does.

"Okay," Dean says, and slaps his thighs, which apparently signifies a topic change, because he turns to face Sam fully. "We got about a minute left of your five minutes," he says. Sam turns toward Dean, too, because he isn't the one with the weird communication hang-ups, and he wants to look at Dean when he's talking to Dean. "Tell me the question you keep putting off with other questions that freak you out less." 

It isn't that Dean isn't insightful. Sam has always known that he is. It's that Dean so rarely shares his insights that it's easy to overlook.

Sam ponders the verbiage for a few seconds, and then decides to use the words that Dean has used before. "I felt that, what you did. It just hurt, and then I was a little pissed off because I could tell you knew it hurt. I was confused, I couldn't figure out what you were doing, and it fucking hurt a lot, and then I got that you didn't care. No, not that you didn't care, just that it didn't matter. That you wanted..." Sam shuts his mouth with a snap, frustrated.

"That I was going to do whatever I wanted, whether it hurt you or not," Dean says calmly, unapologetically. "That I was going to do whatever I wanted."

"Yeah," Sam says, feeling stunned all over again at the idea, and more stunned at the way his cock is already getting hard remembering it. "I felt that. That." He licks his lips, and has a brief moment of sympathy for Dean, because this is kind of hard to talk about, and Sam rarely has a problem talking about anything. By some bizarre twist in the space-time continuum, Dean seems pretty okay with this conversation, the two of them looking right at each other, the sun still high in the sky. Then he realizes that this conversation is essentially about sex, which Dean has never really had a problem talking about. The conversations the two of them have had in the dark might have had some things in common with this conversation, but they hadn't been about sex, really. Not quite. "That," Sam repeats a little hoarsely, "was so good I still can't really think about it. That felt like something... some part of my brain I didn't know existed..." 

"I know, Sam," Dean says a little tightly. He looks slightly pained, and Sam thinks maybe Dean is not as okay with this as Sam thought, and then he takes in Dean's faint flush and dilated pupils, and is exponentially more aroused at knowing that Dean is turned on just hearing Sam trying and failing to articulate the experience. "It's supposed to be like that. That's what it feels like when it's working right."

"That's my thing?" Sam asks a little plaintively. "My thing is doing what you want even if it hurts?"

Abruptly, Dean leans forward and kisses him. He wraps a hand around the back of Sam's neck, and really, seriously kisses him, something somewhere between the bruising collision of the first time and the heated but unhurried kisses while Sam jerked them both off last night. There is a lot of reassurance in it, heat but no pain. It may be the first time either of them have been doing nothing but kissing while wide awake, so Sam guesses he shouldn't be so surprised at the fact that Dean is a fantastic kisser. He is all warm urgency and slick tongue and such obvious enjoyment that even as off-balance as Sam is, it's easy to let himself respond and be distracted and become totally involved in attempting to figure out what he had done that made Dean make that little warm rumbly noise in order to duplicate it.

When Dean pulls back, Sam's mouth feels super sensitive and he has to blink a couple of times before he notices that Dean is watching him with what looks like concern.

"What?" Sam says.

"Not even if it hurts. It's nothing to do with that. It might happen sometimes I guess, but I don't want to do things that you don't like, Sam. This, today, was only with you hurt because you already were, and it was the fastest way to make you get it."

Sam thinks about that for a minute. "To jumpstart my brain," he says slowly. "To get me to make the connection."

Dean nods. "I had a plan," he says almost wryly, though his voice is a little strained. "It didn't involve hurting you, Sammy." 

"But it worked," Sam says, because the shape of it is clearer. "I want to do whatever you want, and the fact that it did hurt made that I wanted it to be like that pretty obvious."

"Not you," Dean says. "It's more like letting _me_ do whatever I want." 

Sam considers the difference between the two. It's the difference between sucking Dean's cock and letting Dean fuck his mouth. Which are two very different things, both of which are ridiculously hot, but even with less than ten minutes of half-grasped actual knowledge, the idea of the latter kind of makes Sam feel... volatile. Like he might short out like a circuit breaker. Like he would like to do that some more right now, please.

"And that ain't quite it, not all of it," Dean says, and he looks kind of evilly amused. Like he knows exactly what Sam is thinking, and is now toying with Sam mercilessly because Dean is a dick. Yet Sam doesn't interrupt him, because he wants to know. "That's a part, the edge of it. All I could do on short notice."

"What?" Sam asks helplessly, already fully aware that Dean won't tell him.

Dean shakes his head, but looks far less mean than anticipated. "I'll show you as soon as I can. You gotta trust me that I'm not just fucking with you."

"You're totally fucking with me," Sam grumbles.

Dean grins. "I'm fucking with you a little, but only 'cuz you get so flustered." 

"Shut up," Sam scowls. Then he has a moment of unexpected empathetic comprehension. "Your pain thing is like this. You, I mean. That's what it's like for you. Like, like something is breaking in your brain?"

Dean looks at Sam for a long moment, as though considering something. "No," he says finally. "Physically, that's what does it for me. It does things to my head, too, yeah, but not the thing you're talking about. Not the one that makes your brain white out."

"That's the thing I'm missing," Sam says, utterly dismayed. "That's the thing I'm not doing for you." He had known, Dean had told him that there was something, but understanding it, knowing that there is that breaking, euphoric pulse of need fulfilled that he is not giving Dean, is terrible, somehow.

"Hey," Dean says softly. "Hey. Listen, I know you got an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, but try and remember that I made a choice not to tell you. I got a good reason, and you gotta trust me on that, too, but in the meantime, this is not a big deal. Sam, c'mon, I'm having the best fucking sex of my life here. With my _brother_. I'm bisexual without warning and I'm violating the laws of man and nature, so try and keep ahold of some perspective, okay?" 

Sam trips over 'bisexual without warning' and falls face first into 'violating the laws of man and nature,' and cracks up, which is almost certainly exactly what Dean had been going for.

Dean lets Sam laugh himself out, which takes a while. He keeps thinking VIOLATING THE LAWS OF MAN AND NATURE all in big letters, and that maybe they should get a bumper sticker for the Impala and t-shirts, and dissolving into helpless strangled-sounding chuckles. 

"Bisexual without warning," Sam says weakly, when he's pretty sure he's done.

Dean looks unimpressed. "Do we gotta deal with homunculus guy tonight? Seriously, because I could get behind a pizza and some beer and maybe seeing if I can make your brain break without hurting you this time." Dean gives him a look that is too sincere to be sincere. 

Sam is horribly, almost irresistibly tempted. He's sure this is proof that Dean is contagious, that over-exposure has finally unhinged Sam, but the truly scary thing is how he is having a really hard time giving a shit.

"Yes, we have to," Sam finally manages to force out past uncooperative lips. "He's probably not evil, and it's unlikely he's going to murder anyone via mythical magical construct tonight, but if he does, and we were having sex at the time, I'll be traumatized forever." Which is absolutely true.

"Dammit," Dean says grumpily.

***

It takes them a while to clean up. Well. It takes Sam a while to clean up.

Dean strips, washes his hands and forearms, uses a wet washcloth on his face and cock, gets dressed in fresh clothes, and is good to go.

Sam strips and spends five minutes with a wet washcloth, and then gives up and gets in the shower even though he knows the spray is going to hurt a lot, because there is just no way to get all the blood and come off him without a shower. He has blood in his hair. He isn't sure how that even happened. And it's impossible to really clean up when you're still leaking blood. He gets out of the shower with their last washcloth folded into quarters and pressed over the spell, but by the time he gets his jeans on, it's starting to spot through visibly. If he puts a shirt on, it's not only going to be ruined, it's going to be obvious that he's bleeding underneath it. He isn't sure how much gauze they'd actually have to layer over it to keep up with the seep of it, but he's guessing a lot.

There is a hysterically funny moment (to Sam anyway) where Dean comes at him with a huge tube of Neosprorin, and Sam cracks up and then has to soothe Dean's irritation by explaining that it's impossible for a spell to become infected. Dean replies with injured dignity that there was no way he could be expected to know that magic was antibacterial.

Still, it's Dean who comes up with the only half-decent solution, and even then it's strictly makeshift. He presses a pad of gauze as thick as a brick against the spell and has Sam hold it while he winds more gauze around under Sam's left arm and over his right shoulder until it looks like Sam is half-mummified. Then he winds an Ace bandage around all of that. And then he has Sam put on a thermal undershirt, a black t-shirt, and a black button up. Then he gives Sam his jacket, which is too tight in the shoulders, but is black, which will hide blood better. Sam feels that the jacket is the last straw, and they're now officially going steady. He's tempted to buy Dean a promise ring just for the outraged squawking noise Dean would inevitably make.

They both know Sam's going to eventually bleed through, but they can't do anything about that. The internet helpfully informs them that moonrise will be at 5:01 pm, a little over three hours away. Sam grabs a clean shirt for later, MapQuests the address the coven had given them, and they go. They're both starving, but they don't stop to eat. Dean is right that the alchemist probably has a job, and their best shot at taking a look around is while he's gone, so they'll eat later. Right now it's time to do their job.

It isn't until they're in the Impala, about halfway between the motel and their destination, that it occurs to Sam that they had just talked about their Dad for the first time without the kind of cutting grief that makes them both crazy in different ways. That it's been so long since he's heard Dean talk about Dad without that sharp fold of fury and resentment beneath his tone that Sam had almost forgotten how it sounded to hear Dean talk about their father with love. Sam understands that furious resentment, had felt it when Dad was alive for so long and so often that it had taken up residence in his tone of voice permanently until Dad had died, but Dean had never felt that way about him. Dean had loved him and admired him and Sam has a moment of guilt that it had been Sam that Dean had been so uncharacteristically angry with Dad over, but it passes quickly, and he just feels sorrowful. It had been unfair for Dad to lay Sam's soul at Dean's door, but Sam can't really blame him. Sam himself had done the same thing, after all.

Then he further realizes that the conversation had taken place directly after incestuous kinky sex magic while both their cocks were still hanging out of their pants, and has to press the side of his palm against his mouth and stare intently out the window so Dean can't see his face while he tries desperately not to somehow vocally express his horrified hilarity at the idea.

VIOLATING THE LAWS OF MAN AND NATURE, he thinks hysterically.


	10. 10

They park a couple of blocks away, in the event that they do end up breaking and entering. They aren't actually planning on it. They want to look around outside, mostly. If the coven is right, then the black hen method of homunculus creation is unlikely. It's not impossible, but it's unlikely. What they are hoping to find, really, is an illegal chicken coop. Because the other method means they're probably going to be looking at a body count, and neither of them want that. More importantly, nothing they have found so far really jibes with someone who is already killing to make his or her creations. Willing to hurt people to keep the homunculi, yes, but that isn't the same thing. It's not great, but it's better than the alternative.

It's a small white house with a red door. The yard out front is minuscule, but the back yard is a mystery. It's surrounded by an eight foot privacy fence. There's no gate.

"In the back," Dean says with what is almost a sigh, and Sam agrees. It seems like they spend half their time digging stuff up or climbing over or into things. They walk around the block once, see no one, and slip between two houses that back up to the privacy fence. Sam cups his hands and gives Dean a leg up, and hears Dean land quietly on the other side. Sam pulls himself up, wincing at the bright lance of pain that spears the left side of his chest, and Dean steadies him on his feet when he lands.

The back yard is bigger. There's a small shed at the furthest point from the house, and a small garden under the back window. The porch is almost big enough to be a patio, and part of the roof from the house extends out to cover it, with three white square posts set into the concrete to support it. Sam is looking at the little garden, which is no more than six by six, and it smells enough like herbs without getting a close look, that's what Sam is betting on. If there are mandrakes, that's the most likely location.

Maybe they don't have to be grown in ground ejaculated on by a hanged man. Maybe that's a myth. Or maybe it's partly a myth; they've run across stories before that were half-truths, accidentally or deliberately mistold or just passed down incorrectly over time.

"Sam," Dean says, in his flat 'I am not happy' tone. Sam turns, and Dean is looking toward the shed. Sam follows his gaze, and sees what Dean isn't happy about. There's a mound of freshly turned earth between the side of the shed and the fence. The space between is only about six feet total, but it's enough space for a grave.

"Shit," Sam says, stomach sinking.

Dean doesn't waste time being dismayed. He crosses the space to the shed and checks the latch. It isn't locked, so he opens it up and leans in. It isn't a big shed. He steps back thirty seconds later with a shovel. "It's just gardening stuff." He tips the shovel so that Sam can see the fresh dirt on the blade. "Let's take a look at what he's burying."

Sam sighs and joins Dean. With their luck, they'll end up having to salt and burn bodies, too, just in case whomever is in the ground decides to get all vengeful, which means Sam will have to walk back to the car to get what they need. Dean doesn't really mind digging graves, but he hates to fetch and carry.

There isn't really room for both of them in the slice of space between the shed and the fence, and they've only got one shovel anyway, so Sam doesn't think anything of it when Dean starts to work. About three feet down, however, when Sam suggests it's his turn, Dean gives him a 'don't be a moron’ look. "What?" Sam asks.

"Sam, you're still all cut up. You lost probably two pints of blood today," Dean says.

"It wasn't that much," Sam says.

Dean gives him the 'I'm being patient' look, which doesn't actually look very patient at all. "Maybe not, but you're still bleeding. Shut the hell up and lemme dig."

Sam shuts up. He watches Dean dig, and tries to pretend he doesn't find dirty, sweaty Dean remotely arousing. He can't remember the last time they dug up a grave in the middle of the day. Maybe once they go back to doing it in the dark, it won't be a problem.

Dean is only another six or eight inches down when he hits something. Dean looks down between his own feet as though surprised.

"It's in his backyard," Sam says. "It's not that surprising that it isn't standard cemetery depth."

"It ain't that," Dean says, and lifts the shovel up out of the hole. Sam takes it and squats down. "It feels weird. Not wood or metal, which would be weird for hiding a body anyway, but not... not _flesh_ either. Something else."

Before Sam can respond in some way, Dean is squatting in the hole and feeling around with his hands. Sam isn't sure that's a good idea, and is about to say so, when Dean says, "Huh."

"What?" Sam asks, but he can't really see anything around the bulk of Dean's body. Dean leans back, his shoulders against the wall of earth behind him, and Sam sees what.

Dean has uncovered some withered looking, vaguely humanoid remains. Definitely not human, and Sam flaps his hands at Dean until he climbs out of the hole so Sam can get a closer look. Sam brushes away dirt gingerly, because while what he's looking at is definitely solid, it feels fragile, looks fragile. Sam uncovers the shape of a short arm, part of a torso, and finally a head with vaguely human features, inset eye sockets, the faint bump of a nose, a line for a mouth. He brushes away the top part of the head, and there are the straggling remains of half-decayed leaves.

"An onion-head," Dean says helpfully.

Sam says nothing. There is something sad about it. The feel of the parts Sam has uncovered is like tightly bound together corn husks, heavily textured but a little soft, probably already falling a little apart without the magic that had been driving it. He uncovers further down the arm, and finds a small hand with only three fingers and a thumb, but otherwise perfectly formed and delicate. Sam just looks at it for a minute, and then sighs. "Hand me a flashlight," he says, and Dean does.

Sam takes a better look, and it doesn't help to make him feel less sad. In the corner, a small distance up from what he's uncovered, there is the suggestion of another something just under the earth, something round. Sam uncovers it, knowing what it will be. Another round face, empty of life, and Sam isn't sure if it's just because he knows what these _were_ , but it feels like looking at most human corpses. Like he can see that they were alive once, somehow. That their bodies still contain the suggestion of life.

"I'm not liking this guy for a psycho killer, Sam," Dean says. "He buried them when they ran outta life." He shakes his head. "You don't bury something that don't mean something to you."

"Being a psycho killer and being able to care about something aren't actually mutually exclusive," Sam says, which is totally true, but he agrees with Dean. Something catches his eye, some splotch of color on the otherwise brown on brown of the remains. He aims the flashlight at it, and it looks like writing. Sam uncovers the whole torso gently.

Across it's chest, in what looks like blue, broad tipped magic marker, is written: Ozzie.

Sam pulls himself up to sit on the side of the hole next to Dean and aims the flashlight so Dean can see.

They look at each other.

He named them. Sam has no doubt that if he dug further down and uncovered the others, they would all have names, as well. He named them, and he stole blood from witches to keep them alive, and he buried them when that didn't save them.

Wordlessly, Sam moves so Dean can fill in their grave.

Sam walks over to the herb garden and takes a look. There are a lot of familiar herbs, spearmint, lemongrass, verbena, sage. A lot of it has been harvested already, but there are a few stragglers. At the far end, closest to the house, is an empty patch of earth that has been carefully smoothed. There are no leaves, and Sam feels worse about this than any of the salt and burns he and Dean have ever done, but he checks anyway, and finds no mandrake bulbs beneath the earth. His guess is that this is where they were grown, and maybe he had planted more once he'd succeeded, but once they started dying and he couldn't save them, he'd come back and dug them up again. Sam has no evidence except the carefully smoothed earth, but he still thinks he's right. He smooths the earth again when he's done.

The he sits down in a patio chair and tips his head back against the side of the house to wait for Dean.

They don't know everything there is to know, but what they do know doesn't feel like evil to Sam. It doesn't feel like mad science/alchemy either. You don't name your experiments. You don't bury them. It may have started as an experiment, something you do just because you want to see if you can, but the rest of it, even the attacks on Claire's coven. That feels like desperation to Sam. That feels like grief and fear of loss.

He sighs and opens his eyes when he hears Dean coming, and immediately sees a yellow length of polyester rope, bright against the unpainted wood of the underside of the porch roof. He sits up and follows the length of it. On one end it's knotted around an eyebolt in one of the posts holding up the patio roof. It runs alongside the edge of the patio roof, through six more eyebolts mounted evenly along the length of the roof support, and ends in a tangled loop dangling from the last eyebolt. Sam stands up and reaches for it.

It untangles into what is very obviously a noose, one with a long tail that widens and shrinks the loop. "Shit," Sam says.

But Dean takes the loop out of Sam's hand, pulls the tail through a few times, and then grabs the patio chair and drags it over to the very edge of the porch. He climbs up on it, holding the noose in one hand, and looks down at the garden.

"It says 'hanged man'?" Dean asks.

"Yes," Sam says.

"Not dead man, but 'hanged man'?" Dean clarifies.

"Yeah," Sam says, and gets it. "Dead is implicit, but never stated. It just says hanged."

Dean puts the noose around his neck and cinches it up, the tail end secure in one fist.

"Dean," Sam says.

Dean says, "Trust me, Sammy."

Sam frowns, but doesn't stop Dean from stepping carefully down from the chair. It leaves Dean's toes dangling about six inches off the ground, which is a little low for the angle to be right, but maybe the guy is shorter. Dean, a little red-faced, but not alarmingly so, slowly plays the tail of the rope loose until his feet are firmly on the ground. He slides it out from around his neck, tightens it back up, and threads the doubled over length of the noose back through the closest eyebolt.

"That has to be it," Sam says, relieved, because inexplicably, it matters to him that this guy is not a psycho killer.

"That's pretty fuckin’ smart," Dean says. He looks impressed.

Sam laughs. "Pretty fucking weird," he says. "But better than being a psycho killer."

"It's not that weird," Dean says, dismissively, but he's giving Sam a steady look. "Not any weirder than fucking your brother."

Dean doesn't mention any of the rest of it, but Sam doesn't need him to. He's being scolded for closed-mindedness by _Dean_ , and he absolutely deserves it. The end is nigh.

"You have a point," he says, and hooks the leg of the patio chair with his toe and scoots it back into its original position. He sits down. Dean sits down in the one next to it. "Now what?" Sam asks.

Dean ponders this, his gaze far away. "I don't think he's gonna do it again," he says. Sam can hear the 'but' coming, and just waits. "But people do stupid shit. And he's already done stupid shit 'cause of this, so I think we gotta talk to him."

Sam looks at his watch. It's a quarter to four. "You want to go get something to eat?"

"Yeah, sure," Dean says, and they climb over the back of the fence again and make their way back to the Impala.

They clean up with wet wipes in the car, Sam doing most of Dean's face. Dean has Sam pull up all three of his shirts, but he's not bleeding through yet, so they go get something to eat.

They don't talk much while they eat. Dean seems content just to be fed, and Sam is thinking about how to approach their guy and about the broccoli cheese soup in a bread bowl he's eating in equal amounts. Sam pauses with a soup-soaked bite of bread bowl halfway to his mouth, and Dean immediately looks up from his very tall sandwich with four kinds of meat and three kinds of cheese.

"Are you hurtin'?" Dean asks.

"What? Oh, no," Sam says, and eats his bite of bread bowl. "No, I think I know how to get us in the front door. You have to let me do the talking."

"Okay," Dean says, and goes back to his sandwich.

Dean finishes first, and he contemplates his empty plate for a minute in silence. "I'm still starving," he finally says.

Sam glances down at his mostly eaten sandwich and the empty place where his bread bowl used to be, and says, "Yeah, me too, actually." He snorts a little. "We had a busy day, even for us."

Dean stands up. "You want the same?"

"Just more soup," Sam says.

"Bread bowl," Dean says, and rolls his eyes, and goes back to the counter to order. Sam puts salt in Dean's coffee, and manages to get most of his bread bowl eaten before Dean discovers it, so isn't even outraged when Dean, sputtering, dumps the dregs of it over the ruins of Sam's meal. 

Dean glares balefully at him, both of them fully aware that Sam's spell-wound is saving him from a punch in the arm that would otherwise have earned him. Sam gives Dean a sunny grin.

"Bitch," Dean grumbles.

When they pull up in front of the house a little before six, there is a blue Honda Civic parked out front, and the front porch light is on.

"Let me do the talking," Sam tells Dean again.

"Don't get us killed," Dean tells him.

They walk up to the front door and ring the bell.

The guy who answers is shorter than Dean by three or four inches, about forty-five years old, and looks kind of unsettlingly like Bruce Willis. "Can I help you?" he asks, looking from Dean to Sam.

"My name is Sam Winchester," Sam says. "This is my brother, Dean. We aren't here to hurt you or your homunculi, but we'd like to talk to you about them."

The guy just stares at Sam for almost five seconds, gobsmacked. "I don't know what you're talking about," he says finally, and totally unconvincingly.

"You don't have to," Sam tells him. "If you tell us to go away, we will. We aren't here to cause you any trouble at all. But Dean and I have been dealing with the supernatural our whole lives. I don't know if we can help you save them, but we're willing to try."

Dean, predictably not letting Sam do the talking, says, "Who else are you gonna talk to?"

Less predictably, that seems to be the exact right thing to say. The guy's eyes sag shut and he leans against the door. When he opens his eyes again, he steps aside and lets them in.

"I only have one left," he says, and turns to look into the main room of the house.

Standing next to the couch is a homunculus. It's a darker brown than the remains they'd found, not exactly wood-textured, but definitely more solid. It's facing the door, and them, and its maker, and it isn't breathing or moving or anything at all, but Sam can see that it's alive, that it's animate. It's wearing a pair of blue board shorts with white palm trees on it. On its chest, in blue magic marker, is written: Floyd.

Next to the homunculus is a small black min-pin looking alertly at Sam and Dean.

"She didn't bark," the guy says. "She always barks at strangers."

Dean hunkers, his hands dangling between his thighs, and says, "C'mere, babydoll," with total seriousness.

The min-pin flings herself across the room as though she'd been waiting her whole life for that invitation, and Dean catches her neatly against his chest. She licks Dean enthusiastically across his left cheek, and Dean smiles widely.

"I think your brother and my dog are soulmates," the guy says bemusedly.

"It wouldn't be the strangest thing to happen today," Sam says honestly.

***

The alchemist's name is Robin Bryant. He rebuilds vintage cars for a living, and Dean predictably takes them promptly on an Impala related tangent. It takes a half an hour to get through it, along with a promise from Dean to give Robin a good look at her before they leave. Dean molests Robin's dog the whole time, and Sam asks for permission to touch the homunculus. Robin grants it, kind of anxiously, and Sam sits himself down on the couch beside it and lets himself study it.

Robin talks to Dean, but he doesn't take his eyes off of Sam for long.

It turns toward Sam when he sits down. It could be intelligence, it could be Robin's doing, it could just be an awareness of his presence. Whatever it is, it doesn't appear to mind when Sam touches it's chest, feels the slightly cool surface of it, the same heavy texture as the remains outside, but this one is firmer, still bound by whatever magic had created it, though it still isn't hard, like wood. It's like a root, which is exactly what it is, fibrous and firm, but giving. The leaves on the top of it's head are recognizably mandrake leaves. It smells faintly of earth, but pleasantly so, like Robin's herb garden. When Sam waves a hand beside it's face, it turns toward it.

"What is it you think you can do?" Robin asks, interrupting the conversation with Dean.

Dean isn't bothered. He plays with Robin's dog with a rope bone.

"I don't know," Sam says absently. "I don't have enough information. You fed them with milk and honey?"

"For three days," Robin says.

"And how long after that did you know they were in trouble?"

"A lunar month from when he was harvested is when Lars started to soften. I didn't really notice at first. I had seven of them, and it wasn't until he started to show signs of discoloration that I realized."

"He? So you didn't harvest them all at once?" Sam examines the homunculus' hands, and discovers that the smallest fingers of both hands are a little spongy to the touch.

"Just one the first time," Robin says. "I didn't think it would work. Then five the following Friday. It would have been all six, but Godzilla was tired. So then it was just Floyd left, and she brought him in the Friday after that."

"Did the five you harvested at the same time all... go at once?"

Robin shakes his head. "Over the course of a few days. I can't be sure why. It could be that they're like vegetables, and the heartiest just live longer. Or it could be the witches blood. Maybe the stronger the witch, the longer their blood sustained them. I don't know enough to know for sure."

Sam thinks of digging that grave up six times to add to it and his chest tightens. Still, he says, "The witches blood was almost black magic, you know that, right? It was definitely an attack on innocent people who in no way deserved it, and they all know where you live, so you're lucky they're white witches or you'd be dead already."

Robin doesn't deny it. "I..." he says, and sinks down onto the couch next to Sam. The homunculus turns to face him. "I think I went a little crazy," he says unsteadily, and stretches out a hand to rest against his homunculus' chest. "When Lars went, I felt it. I feel all of them, like shadows of my own mind. They don't think, exactly, but they know they are. They don't have emotions except to echo mine. When Lars died, I didn't know that it was going to feel like, like a layer of my skin was being stripped away. That isn't right, but I can't get any closer." He makes a small, bitter sound pretending to be a laugh. "I've tried. So it died hurting and afraid, echoing me. I've tried to make it kinder for the others, but it's... Not painful, not really, but it's awful. Every time, it's awful." He shakes his head. "I think I went a little crazy," he repeats. "It wasn't that I didn't know better; it's that it seemed worth it, that I wasn't doing irreparable harm, and it could save them. A small loss in exchange for a great boon. A sacrifice."

"Not your sacrifice," Dean says, and scrubs at the top of Godzilla's head. "It doesn't work that way."

"I know," Robin says, and strokes the homunculus, as though to soothe it.

After that, Robin breaks it down for them exactly. He brings his books, his journal, and lets Sam pour through all of it, explains the things Sam isn't clear on, and shows no real signs of the traditional characterization of alchemist's being secretive. Although, alchemists don't get burned at the stake anymore either, so that could be it. Sam figures it all into a timeline, working out from the news articles which homunculus had been given blood from whom, just in case it does make a difference.

Sam and Robin move to the dining room table to spread out, and Dean watches TV with Godzilla and Floyd, and doesn't bitch at all about being bored.

They end up with about twenty books open to different places, half of them from the Impala. Dean treks out to get each one as Sam asks for it without protest.

Around ten, Robin makes coffee. Sometime after that, Sam isn't sure how long, Sam glances over at Dean and sees he's turned to study the homunculus intently. When Dean sees Sam looking, he says, "I can feel him. He doesn't feel like witchcraft, but I can feel something from him." Then, without any kind of lead up, he says, "Did you try semen?"

"Did I...?" Robin repeats in surprise.

Dean says, patiently, "They were born of earth and semen. I ain't as well read, magically speaking, as you two, but I have never seen the word semen in anything old but medical texts, and even then, not always. Sometimes it's essence or just fluid, and they used to use that for blood half the time, too. Just to make things really hard, I guess. Are you sure you're translating it right? Did you try it?"

Robin flushes deeply, but says, "Yeah, I thought of that. I tried it. Nothing."

Dean frowns, and goes back to looking thoughtfully at Floyd, but Sam stands up.

"Wait," he says, his mind sparking uncertainly for a few seconds as he tries to grasp on to whatever it is Dean's question had brushed up against in the dark. "Wait," he says again, but then he has it. "A lunar cycle. Sometimes on blood. If it's born of earth and semen, what is missing from that equation?"

Dean and Robin stare at him.

"Come on," Sam says. "Alchemy is as much about blood as witchcraft. Why doesn't it require blood to initiate? Because it requires blood to sustain. Every 28 days, a full lunar cycle."

"Moon blood," Dean says. "Menstrual blood."

"Yes!" Sam says. "God, that is _it_ , and it makes a shit ton of sense why they're so rare, even historically. Because it takes two people to sustain them, at least via this method, and alchemists have always been solitary."

"You got a girlfriend?" Dean asks, all practicality.

"No, not at present," Robin says a little primly, like they aren't already talking about semen and menstrual blood.

"Well, I'm about to make the grossest suggestion imaginable here," Dean says, "but every ladies room I ever been in has a special little trash can in each stall for tampons."

Sam and Robin stare at Dean.

Sam can't bring himself to think about it long enough to speculate about how Dean knows that.

"That could work," he says. "It's kind of creepy, but not illegal or dangerous."

"It depends on how fresh it has to be," Robin says, thinking aloud mostly, but Dean has an answer for that.

"It's dead blood already." He looks up at the silence. "What? That's why it's leaving the body. It's the lining of the uterus, and once a month the body replenishes it, don't you guys watch PBS? So it's dead by the time it becomes menstrual blood. It probably won't matter if it's a day or two old."

Sam and Robin stare at Dean.

Dean goes back to looking at Floyd. A minute later, he says, "Did it do any good at all? The witches blood, I mean?"

Sam and Robin had already talked this through, but Sam isn't surprised to find out that Dean hadn't really been listening.

"We think a little," Sam says. "A few days. Could be the magic, could be that it was female blood, could be anything, really."

"You got a silver knife?" Dean asks. Robin nods. "Bring it here." Robin leaves the room, presumably to do so.

"You are not a witch," Sam whispers, crossing the room.

"But if it's just the magic, that won't matter," Dean says, unconcerned.

"You don't want me to let you do witchcraft," Sam whispers. "You told me so earlier _today_ , Dean."

"It's not witchcraft," Dean says, shaking his head. "It's just blood, freely given. It's not even a sacrifice, Sammy. Don't get your panties in a twist."

Sam takes a deep breath.

"Sam, I'm sure. This is not witchcraft. This is like a cupcake." Sam gives him a disbelieving look. "It's just a snack for Floyd. If it doesn't work, it won't hurt anything."

Robin, having come back into the room sometime during this exchange, is looking dubious but slightly amused. It's the closest thing to a smile that has crossed his face all night.

"How did you do it with the witches blood?" Dean asks.

"I tried everyplace," Robin says. "There's no way to know, but I don't think it matters. They are solid mass, all of one piece." He pauses for a second. "You're a witch?"

"No," Dean says. "But I can feel stuff, sometimes, and I can feel Floyd. I have the shape of him in my head, and all blood is more powerful freely given. That's why white magic needs so much less of it than black magic. I figure it might work, but it might not. I don't know that it'll matter much if the menstrual blood is a go, but if this works, you got a little extra time to make sure it don't have to be pure. That's the only thing, with a tampon. I don't know if that might make the blood impure, which is a thing for alchemy, right? Purity?"

"Right," Robin says, looking at Dean like he's grown a brain on the outside of his head, where Robin can suddenly see it.

Sam is half-amused and half-irritated. This is the problem with the way Dean plays dumb. Then people don't believe him when he knows something.

Dean shrugs one shoulder, as if to say, 'well, there you go.' He holds out his hand for the knife, and Robin gives it to him. It's plain and visibly very sharp, which is for the best as far as Sam is concerned. The further from ritualistic the better. Dean cuts a tiny slice into the pad of his thumb, puts pressure just above it, and smears a long swath of blood right under the word Floyd.

As far as Sam can see, nothing happens. But Robin inhales sharply and Dean exhales slowly.

Sam examines Floyd's hand. It feels solid, no soft spots.

"Blood freely given," Dean says, and hands the knife back to Robin. He stands up, Godzilla tucked up under his arm. He walks over to the door. "C'mere, Floyd," Dean says. Floyd doesn't move. "You tell him," Dean says.

Robin doesn't say anything, but Floyd walks over to Dean and looks up at him. Dean and Godzilla look down at Floyd.

"Yeah, that's better," Dean says, and brings Godzilla back toward the couch, Floyd following behind him like a duckling. It moves oddly, not stiffly, as Sam had kind of expected, but as though it could bend anywhere it wanted, like it's made of rubber. It makes sense, Sam guesses. It's not like Floyd has bones. It's locomotion via magic, so it's not surprising that it looks a little unnatural. "And I can't call him, so that's good," Dean says. "If you get blood donations, you don't want every witch in town being able to summon your homunculus."

The weird part of that is how normal Dean makes it sound.

Dean scrubs at Godzilla's head, and she looks up at him with adoring eyes.

"If it doesn't work," Sam says. "If purity turns out to be a problem, then you need a direct source."

Dean makes a face, like _he_ wasn't the one to suggest smuggling used tampons out of ladies' rooms. Sam rolls his eyes.

"You think they'll help me?" Robin asks, following Sam's train of thought nicely. "After what I did?"

"They're fairly forgiving folks," Dean says. And Dean would know.

"They might," Sam says. "I can get in touch with their Priest and have him speak to the coven on your behalf. I can't promise anything for them, but I'll ask. In the meantime, if it occurs to you to do something stupid or evil, reconsider. They all have our number, and Dean can kill you with his finger. Any one of them." 

"If I have to kill you, it's really Floyd I have to worry about," Dean says calmly. "And Floyd has my blood in him."

Robin's eyes go a little wide.

Sam is impressed.

"Go ahead, if you want to try," Dean says, and pats Floyd on the head. "I won't hold it against you."

"No," Robin says. "No, I'm not a white witch, but I'm not siccing Floyd on people. I swear."

"We believe you," Sam says. "We wouldn't be helping you if we thought you were going to send your unkillable minion on a murderous rampage."

"It's just one of those things Sam has to say. Like if he forgets, you might accidentally become evil, all because he didn't remind you not to." Dean tickles Godzilla's ears. "And the coven'll keep an eye on you, just in case. Don't make us come back here. I like Floyd, and if I have to kill him, I'll be upset. If I have to kill you, I'm keeping your dog." Dean rubs his chin along the top of Godzilla's little head, and she makes a happy little doggy growling noise.

"Is he kidding?" Robin asks Sam.

"Mostly," Sam tells him, and gives Dean the finger. "It's just one of those things Dean has to say. Like if he forgets, you might accidentally become evil because he didn't remind you that he'll hunt you down and kill you." He has a thought. "The coven needs a new silver ritual knife," he says.

"The purity of the silver is important," Dean says, glancing over at Sam. "And that's what alchemy is all about. You probably got some pure silver you ain't using."

"I can forge a knife," Robin says slowly, looking back and forth between the two of them. "I don't know anything about making a ritual knife."

"They don't need your help for that part," Dean says dismissively. "They'll do that themselves. What they need is something clean to work magic onto."

"Physically clean, or emotionally clean?" Robin asks. "Aren't both what witchcraft is all about." He throws a look at Dean.

Dean looks levelly back, not pretending not to understand that the comment was supposed to be pointed, but not giving any indication that it bothers him, either. "Yeah, but in this case if you're smart, the only things you can contribute emotionally will already be clean. Gratitude and generosity aren't ugly emotions. You'd be doing them a favor, if you did it. They did you a favor when they sent us here. I ain't askin’ you to be a white witch. I'm askin’ you not to be an asshole." 

"You don't have to convince me," Robin says, looking a little spooked. "I have no problem with the white witches. I'm happy to help, even if they can't help me with Floyd. They don't owe me; I owe them. And okay, I was being an asshole, but you did threaten to kill me and keep my dog."

"Your dog is awesome," Dean says sincerely.

"He did say that," Sam agrees, making a mental note to pay more attention to when Dean is threatening people. Apparently he's so used to it, it barely registers. "And he probably really would like to steal your dog, but he won't. And Dean doesn't kill people. Dean kills monsters. Just don't be a monster, and you're pretty much safe."

There is a weird silence.

Dean says, "I think this is goodbye, Godzilla." He holds her up and turns her to face him. "Make him give you the good food. Bite his ass if he gives you any lip." Godzilla licks Dean's face enthusiastically.

Robin turns to look at Sam. Sam shrugs. "He has a way with girls."

Dean says, "You still want to take a look at the Impala?"

Apparently, Robin does.

When Sam passes Floyd with an armload of books, Floyd turns his whole body to follow him to the door. Sam thinks of Robin saying that they don't think, but they know they are. Sam isn't sure that's possible. If they know they are, isn't some level of thought required? No way to tell. But just in case, it feels wrong not to acknowledge Floyd's existence. "I'll see you around, Floyd," Sam says. "Try and stay out of trouble." 

It doesn't sound any weirder than Dean talking to Godzilla.


	11. 11

It's not quite midnight when they get back to the motel.

Sam strips to the waist as soon as they're inside. There is blood soaked through the gray thermal undershirt, but the t-shirt is washable and the rest of it is fine. Dean helps him peel back the layers of bandages, and the bottommost are so soaked that he has to use the thermal shirt to catch the blood that drips from them down Sam's chest, but they don't even stick to the spell like they would've to a normal wound. They slide right away, and when Dean carefully swipes the shirt across Sam's chest, the spell is uniformly scabbed over, not bleeding at all.

Dean ditches the laundry and wet wipes the remaining blood off Sam's chest, and for the first time, Sam can really see the shape of the spell set into his skin. He knows it already, had picked it from the book, but it still looks strange. The little line of scabs in the middle is the only thing he doesn't know, and it's upside down. He rubs a fingertip over it gently, but he can't tell from the shape.

"What did you pick?" Sam asks.

Dean shrugs and lays his whole hand gently over the spell. It hurts, but not enough to mention. Dean's hand is warm. "What came into my head," Dean says. "I'm gonna take a shower, I didn't get one earlier. Take these."

Dean hands him two blue codeine tablets. Sam thinks about arguing. It really doesn't hurt that badly. But then he takes them and dry swallows them. If he doesn't, Dean will worry.

Dean strips and disappears into the bathroom, but he leaves the door open so Sam can take a piss and brush his teeth.

In the slightly steamy mirror, the center of the spell is a roundish blur with a wiggly line through it.

Sam uses his thumb to clear a corner and shifts so the spell is directly in front of it.

It takes him a little bit to resolve it into something that makes sense. His brain keeps trying to cycle it into a rune or a symbol, something to do with their job or even letters. It isn't until he's stopped trying to scan it for a translation and just looks at it that he recognizes it.

Then he clears the corner of the mirror again, and leans in as close as he can without racking himself on the corner of the sink, just to make sure.

Dean has carved the little stylized Impala symbol into the middle of a centuries old spell design on Sam's chest. 

And it looks weirdly right there, the not-quite perfect circle with the sleek curve of the impala body like a sideways lightning bolt shot across it, the tiny, slightly dipped curve of the antlers. It's a perfect copy of the image set right into the middle of the Impala's steering wheel, but that isn't what surprises him. Of course Dean would get it right. He looks at it every day. It's that it doesn't look out of place at all. It looks like it was meant to be a part of the spell from the very beginning.

Sam casts about for how he feels about it. He expects amusement or mockery or even irritation, because it is such a _Dean_ thing to do. No one else on Earth.

But all he can think of is Edward telling Dean it had to mean the two of them in Dean's mind, and Dean had chosen this. It was what came into his head, Dean said.

The Impala, of course, is their home. It's the only thing they have that they have always had, since before Sam's memories even begin. It's the only really permanent thing Sam has ever had in his life, the only constant. 

Dean had rebuilt almost every inch of it with his own hands.

"Dude," Dean says from inside the shower stall. "Could you maybe not stand there with the door wide open? You're letting all the warm air out, and my ass is freezing off in here."

Sam flushes the toilet, and shuts the door quickly on Dean's outraged bellow.

He strips off his jeans and climbs into his bed, tired and mellow and happy.

He knows a promise when one gets carved into him, and the best way to thank Dean for it is to shut the hell up about it. 

***

Sam wakes up with a jolt of pain, which is Dean's hand resting on the scabbed over spell.

Dean is standing next to Sam's bed, bent just enough to put his hand on Sam's chest. He's not looking straight at Sam. The dim light filtering in through the window shows Sam a quarter of his profile.

"Dean," Sam says. Then, "Do you like to hurt me?" He doesn't mean to say it. He's still sleep muddled, and not fully in possession of his waking filters, but once he has, he kind of wants to know. It is kind of pertinent, actually.

Dean turns to fully face him, but Sam still can't really see his face. He's just a slightly paler blur in the darkness. "Not really," Dean says. "I can feel the spell. It itches." As soon as Dean says it, Sam can feel it, too. Actual itching, rather than the kind of itching Dean probably means. The itch of a healing cut, or, in this case, about twenty healing cuts. "I like the way you look, though," Dean adds. "When you let me." Sam is thinking about that, about the fact that he likes how Dean looks like that, too, when Dean says, "Come fuck me, Sammy."

Just like that, no build up, totally blatant. Sam doesn't know why this is a surprise. It's not like they've ever done anything that even sort of resembles foreplay at any point, so it shouldn't be. Maybe it's because it's the middle of the night. Or maybe it's because it's the first time Dean has actually asked like that. Or maybe it's because Sam knows that what it means is _Come hurt me, Sammy,_ because if it were anything less, Dean probably wouldn't have woken him.

He decides to think about it later, and rolls up to his feet. His chest aches, but not badly. He suspects something about the white magic is a natural painkiller. Except when Dean had deliberately hurt him, Sam doesn't think it ever hurt as much as it should have.

They both cross the scant space to Dean's bed, and then just stand there for a couple of seconds. It crosses Sam's mind that in reality, they've only had sex a handful of times. It's like they aren't sure how this is supposed to go, now that they know so much that they didn't know before.

"How?" Dean asks, and Sam makes a note of it, because at some point he'll need to know if this is part of it for Dean. If being directed is part of Dean's thing. Sam thinks not. He can't really get his head around the idea of Dean wanting to be bossed around. Then again, before all of this, if he'd ever slapped Dean across the face, Sam would have been one hundred percent sure Dean would belt him in the mouth.

"Hands and knees," Sam says, mostly because he thinks it'll pull at his chest less. He leans and snaps on the lamp without really thinking about it. It's always been in the light. He catches Dean glancing over his shoulder, though, as if he's surprised. He doesn't object, so Sam determines to think about that later, too. Dean arranges himself, and Sam just watches the light play against the long, lean lines of Dean's body and lets himself be uncomplicatedly lustful. Dean is gorgeous. Sam wants to bite every inch of him.

Actually. 

He starts at Dean's ankle, and Dean snorts out a half-laugh at the first bite, which is really more of a nip with a lick added on the end of it. Then Sam's tongue glances across Dean's Achilles tendon, and he fixes his teeth around it and bites for real, and Dean sucks in a breath.

Sam feels like he wakes up. Maybe it was the pain killers, or maybe he really had been half asleep, or maybe he just wasn't really prepared for doing this while he actually mostly knows what he's doing, but Dean's harsh inhale seems to snap down the length of his spine and settle like hooks at the root of his belly. He drags his teeth up Dean's calf and bites down at the back of Dean's knee, already aware that he's never going to make it through every inch of Dean. That's going to have to be an ongoing project.

Dean twists out a little sound, but actually straightens his leg to give Sam better access to the back of his knee, and that doesn't do it for Sam like being under Dean's power had, but it does something. He feels it like he's a sniper scope, and everything else is blocked out at the edges of his vision, but Dean is dead center in his sights.

Sam tugs at Dean's other leg, biting at the back of that knee, too, and Dean slides cooperatively down onto his belly, still propped up on his elbows. He looks over his shoulder at Sam and smiles a little. "Got your feet up under you?" he asks dryly, and Sam bites the back of his thigh and holds on until Dean gives in and makes a choked little cry.

"Maybe you shouldn't antagonize me," Sam says, contemplating the shape of his teeth pressed into Dean's skin. He licks at the bite mark, and is pleased when Dean moans, the muscle in his thigh jumping under Sam's tongue.

"Yeah, well. Maybe I want you antagonized," Dean murmurs, but not in that smart-assed way he would in the daytime, the length of the car seat between them. This is low and smoky, half inviting.

Sam bites the under curve of Dean's ass, right at the inside of his thigh, and Dean makes a high, startled sound that is almost a shock to hear, it sounds so little like Dean's voice ever sounds. Sam mirrors it on the other side, but Dean doesn't make it again, though he does groan. Sam isn't sure Dean is even aware of the way he spreads his thighs a little, his body giving it up, but Sam finds it deeply, almost painfully gratifying.

He bites Dean's lower back where it meets his ass, right alongside the line of his spine. Dean breathes out hard. "Do you?" Sam asks Dean's spine, and bites higher up, where he can feel the faint outline of bone under his teeth.

"I don't know," Dean admits huskily. "It's different with you. Everything is more. I'm still figuring it out."

The admission burns brightly in Sam's chest and belly, and he bites Dean again, this time hard enough that Dean lets out a soft cry and jerks a little, the muscles of his back tensing. Sam licks up the line of Dean's spine and sets his teeth in the back of Dean's neck. Sam's cock drags up along the crack of Dean's ass, and Dean shudders and tips his head forward. His hips rock a little. His hands are set into predictable fists in the sheets.

"Will you tell me something?" Sam asks, his lips behind Dean's ear. He sees the scabbed over bite on Dean's shoulder, and curls his fingers around it without having to consider it, already knowing. Dean's spine arches and his breath catches. Sam sets his teeth over it carefully and bites, nowhere close to how hard he'd bitten down under Dean's direction. Not hard enough to break the scabs. But Dean lets out a full throated moan, and he shifts up enough to shove his ass up against Sam's cock. Sam can't tell if it's deliberate, but it doesn't matter. He presses down against Dean and rocks his hips a little without letting go of Dean's shoulder. Dean mutters something harsh, Sam's name the only thing Sam can really make out. "Turn over," Sam says.

Dean does it neatly, squirming around onto his back. Sam doesn't even have to move to give him room to maneuver. Sam bites Dean's shoulder again, pressing his tongue against the center of the bite. It tastes a little coppery, though it isn't bleeding again. He nips at Dean's throat, and bites at the underside of Dean's jaw so hard that Dean jerks and breaths out in rough little pants. Sam draws back and considers Dean's face. He isn't quite as hectic with color as he had been with Sam fucking him that first couple of times, and he's still essentially present, watching Sam with eyes that are dark, but not glazed. His lips are wet. Sam leans in and licks at his lips, and Dean opens his mouth and licks back, but Sam isn't after kisses. He bites Dean's bottom lip, and Dean sighs and rolls his hips up to bump his cock against Sam's belly. Dean is wet, and Sam bites a little harder. Dean shudders and gives a small, quiet moan that Sam interprets as encouragement. Sam bites harder, and he feels it when Dean's lip tears a little under his teeth an instant before he tastes Dean's blood.

Dean's hands come up and curl into Sam's upper arms hard, and the sound he makes is definitely pain, it's a tight, bitten off noise, but Dean is holding him close and his lower body is arched up, pressing his wet cock hard against Sam, no motion, just pressure. 

"Will you tell me something?" Sam asks again, pulling away from Dean's mouth.

Dean strokes his hands down Sam's arms and then leans up a little. His mouth is a little tentative against Sam's, and Sam notes it but otherwise ignores it, and kisses Dean back. He's sure Dean can taste his own blood in Sam's mouth, and Sam hears himself moan softly at that idea. Dean's breath hitches, and he drags a hand up Sam's back and holds the back of his neck, pulling him down harder. Sam can take a hint. He's kissed guys before, knows how much harder it can be than most women like it, and with Dean. Well. There isn't really a yardstick for that.

Sam takes control of it, and it's possible it was harder the first time, when they had both sort of lost their minds with it, but Sam actually knows how to do this, has both hands on experience and a clear understanding of how it works for Dean, so this time he is firmly in control of himself and the kiss, and Dean makes a hot, rough little moan into Sam's mouth as Sam scrapes at Dean's bitten lip with his teeth, nips at his tongue, pushes Dean's mouth wider and sucks roughly at Dean's tongue. Dean's whole body jerks when Sam braces himself against the shoulder with the bite mark, and jerks again when Sam works a hand beneath his own body to catch one of Dean's nipples and squeeze hard.

Dean breaks away from Sam's mouth to groan, "Jesus, Sam," and Sam takes the opportunity to slide down and bite the nipple he isn't squeezing. Dean chokes on an inhale, and is silent for a few seconds, his mouth open, his eyes clenched shut tight. Sam bites at his ribs and then down to one hipbone. He has to hold Dean down when he bites at the angle of it, and Dean shouts a little, and Sam is really ready to fuck him, wants the hot, sweet pressure of Dean's body around him, but he pushes Dean's thighs apart and bites the inside of his left thigh hard, high enough up that Dean's balls are pressed softly to Sam's jaw. Dean shouts and jerks, the muscle under Sam's teeth spasming, and Sam holds Dean's thighs open and down, and just keeps biting until Dean shouts again, like he's breaking.

Sam pushes himself to his knees and leans forward to grab the lube. Dean is flushed all the way down to his nipples, which are rosy as well, one of them ringed with the marks of Sam's teeth. Sam pauses to kiss each of them, and then lubes his fingers and works one of them into Dean quickly. Dean breathes roughly and shifts restlessly while Sam works him open. Sam leans down and licks away the little puddle of precome on Dean's belly and from the head of his cock, and Dean's hips try to work upward in spite of Sam's fingers still working to open him up.

"Let me ask you something," Sam says, and he'll drop it if Dean ignores him again.

Dean doesn't, though. Dean grates out, "Put it in, Sam. Fuck me," and Sam feels himself flush hot and the jolt of desire is enough to make him work a third finger into Dean a little too quickly, so that Dean hisses with pain, face clenched with it, but his whole body wrenches into motion, a shuddering, sinuous writhe of pain or pleasure, or both. Sam doesn't understand the distinction for Dean.

Sam lubes up his cock and pulls his fingers out, and replaces them immediately with the head of his cock. He doesn't think to bother with a pillow for the angle this time, he just pushes Dean's thighs up and back, and Dean holds himself up, shaking. Sam can see everything, and it isn't that he hadn't watched before. He had, but he hadn't known what he was looking at, really, and he watches the head of his cock slowly breach the tight ring of muscle and sees Dean's mouth fall open, the sweat spring out across his throat and chest and belly, the way his eyes are almost blank with pain or pleasure. Sam pulls back and does it again, and Dean's head falls back and he bites out a long string of syllables that are just noise, not words, but harsh, helpless, cracking sounds that make Sam's head buzz and his cock jerk and it takes real effort, an immense amount of willpower, to pull out again, one hand still curled lightly around his own cock to keep himself lined up. Dean growls out his displeasure, but it twists up into a helpless, still-growling moan of need when Sam presses back in as slowly as he can stand it, and watches the way that Dean stretches around the head of Sam's cock, the way he jerks when the muscle gives and lets Sam in. "You are so fucking gorgeous," Sam says, helplessly, like it's pulled out of him. "I can't believe how you look, I can't..."

And then he's pushing in, and Dean is jerking upward rhythmically, and it's probably too fast, too rough, but Dean is keening, a thick, piteous sound that Sam can't resist, that just makes him press harder, his hands biting into Dean's hips, his whole body feeling like it's alight with pleasure so sharp it's like walking the line of agony. He lifts Dean's ass higher and gets the last couple of inches into him, and Dean is twisting a little again, that restless, shuddering stretch of motion that is still new, Sam thinks to both of them, something Dean hasn't done, hasn't been allowed to do, and can't stop doing now that he is.

Sam stays still and lets Dean clench around his cock, the tight ripple of muscle and heat makes Sam want to bend Dean double and really fucking give it to him, show him, because this is not as good as it gets. Dean hasn't even seen how hard Sam can fuck him, is too tight and too new and too likely to let Sam hurt him because he wants it and doesn't know when to tell Sam to go easier, maybe wouldn't tell Sam even if he did know.

"Sam," Dean begs, "Sam," and when Sam still doesn't move he chokes out an insult that Sam ignores. "Ask me," he groans finally, "What, fucking what?"

"What does it do for you?" Sam asks, his own voice coming low and raw with want. "I know it doesn't feel like pleasure. I can tell by the way you sound, which is which. What does it feel like?" He jerks his hips in a small, tight circle, and Dean wheezes out something laden with consonants, his head rocking back.

He doesn't look at Sam when he answers. "Fire, like," he gasps, "like fire almost close enough to burn, Sam..."

Sam leans forward, working his arms under Dean's knees and bends him up. Sam's hips jerk a little at the new angle, pleasure seeking, and Dean sucks in a shredded breath. "Keep talking," Sam whispers, and pulls out to thrust gently back in. "Tell me why, why is that good?" He thrusts again. Dean gasps, a rending sound tangled in his throat that resolves itself somewhere in the middle of a sentence. 

"...living, alive, like," Dean groans, "all my skin awake..." He interrupts himself with a jagged half-shout, when Sam gets a little rough, and Dean confesses, "...all I know, whole... my life, what it is, always..." He shoves up into Sam's thrusts, all the muscles in his back and thighs flexing, and Sam has to work to hold this jerking, snarling, sweat-slick creature that is his brother. "...safe," Dean breathes, grasping at words like they're handfuls of sand, "...like fire, good and bad... dangerous if you... if you... stupid, but it lights you up, lights me up..."

He reaches for Sam, and the heel of his palm glances against the spell, sliding on Sam's sweaty skin. Sam cries out this time, real pain, and his hips jerk forward hard without his direction, his body arching away from pain.

Dean grates out a moan, but his eyes are little clearer, and he says, all jumbled, but clear enough, "You, are you, did I hurt you, Sammy?"

"It's okay, I'm okay," Sam says, wincing, though he really isn't. The spell had been a low, background pain, dull and unimportant. Now it isn't. Now it hurts like a bitch. He pushes into Dean, thinking mostly about offsetting the pain with the hot pressure-pleasure of Dean's ass around his cock, and it's just chance that he's looking at Dean's face when he does it. That he sees the way Dean's eyes widen, the shine of something different there, the slight stiffening of his body along the whole length of his hard frame. Sam doesn't think about it, he just does it again, watches Dean's face, the burning in Dean's eyes.

"Sorry," Dean says, voice scraped tight, bright, bright eyed, the way he'd looked when Sam had said he was going to hit him the first time, that same cautious hope stretched thin over some want, some deeply held desire.

Sam doesn't want Dean's apology. He wants to know what's going on, and this he can't ask about. It wouldn't be fair to ask Dean things he has already refused to tell Sam, not when Dean is like this. It would be taking advantage.

But he had done something right, something that had shifted Dean not out of the pain, but in the direction of something else, too, and the only thing he can think to do is repeat it, so he gives Dean another sharp thrust, deeper than before, harder, and Dean relaxes under him, body accepting, but he doesn't look away from Sam's face, doesn't throw his head back and give in under the pain, like he is waiting, too, waiting to see if Sam is going to grasp what's happening. 

Sam wants to know, he wants that power, wants to be able to make Dean's mind as hot and helpless and breaking as he can make Dean's body, and he's a little angry at Dean for keeping it from him, expecting him to be able to guess it. He feels a little spike of satisfaction when he thrusts into Dean again and Dean lets out a shout that is part pain and part surprise, satisfaction that isn't about how good Dean feels, so tight and perfect around Sam's cock, but about the surprise. Dean's eyes widen and he regresses a little as Sam fucks him, pounds into the smooth heat of him, not as hard as he can, but harder than he ever has before. Dean seems to have forgotten that he's allowed to make sounds and just breathes like he is fighting for every molecule of air, choking and tearing at each breath, and he's still again like he had been at first, no jerking back demandingly on Sam's cock, no abandoned shuddering or desperate twisting.

Dean's gaze is losing focus again, Sam can see him sinking back into it, and he can't tell if it's the pain or whatever the other thing is, and Sam growls, "Dammit, Dean," and Dean doesn't make a sound when he arches and comes so hard that it splashes up and streaks Sam's chest as well as his own belly, but his eyes are wide open, and Sam is sure. He knows that look from the inside, and that is it. He has to think about it, he will, but just seeing it on Dean's face, the way his body jerks through his orgasm like he is just riding it out, present but not enough to participate, makes Sam feel half-insane and triumphant, never mind that he isn't sure how. It's enough, Dean's wide open, fractured gaze is enough, and Sam shoves at Dean's boneless, pliant body until he throws back his head and comes, too, like a fucking freight train. 

Sam rolls over, off Dean, and sprawls on his back, one of his noodle legs still slung across one of Dean's. He's breathing so hard that he thinks distantly that it's a good thing there are no onlookers, or they'd have the cops and an ambulance here for both of them. Dean sounds almost as bad. Sam just lays there, not trying to examine the tangle of the last few minutes to work out the reasons behind it, not yet. He's just relearning how to breathe right now. He expects Dean to start snoring any second.

Dean doesn't, though. After another minute or so, Dean levers himself up on his hands and drags his leg out from under Sam's. Sam rolls his head to the side to look at Dean. Dean is looking back, uncertain.

Sam is immediately sure that he must not, under any circumstances, let Dean think Sam is freaked out. Even if Sam is a little freaked out. _Especially_ if Sam is a little freaked out. "Five more minutes," Sam says. "My legs still feel like Jello."

Dean's face wreaths into an easy grin, and Sam is so relieved his whole body feels relaxed. More relaxed.

"How are you not snoring already?" Sam asks, and musters up the energy to catch one of Dean's wrists and pull it out from under him. Dean goes down like ninepins, half on his side. Sam drags Dean's hand to his mouth and kisses the inside of Dean's wrist. He looks up, and sees Dean's face as soft as he's ever seen it.

It's gone as quick as it came, and Dean gets an elbow up under him. "I gotta be up," he says, and tugs until Sam lets go of his wrist. "You're bleedin', I gotta be up."

Sam looks down, and there are a few smears of blood across his chest, but he doesn't think he's actually bleeding anymore. Even so, Dean staggers out of bed and to the first aid kit, which is still open from earlier. He walks unsteadily back, holding stuff, but Sam isn't paying attention to any of it. The imprints of his teeth are scattered across Dean's body, but that isn't it. He knows that. Sam had done that. It's the places that Sam had left them, the backs of Dean's knees, his spine, the inside of his thigh, his throat, his mouth. All the most vulnerable places, all of Dean's softness under Sam's teeth, and Dean had never made a move or a sound to protect himself.

Sam has to look away, he feels too hot, his skin a confinement, suddenly. Sam had pushed Dean down and marked him up, and Dean has always been his, always, even when it wasn't like this, but now Sam can see it on his skin, everyone can see it. 

"Sam?" Dean says, and touches Sam's shoulder. "Sammy?"

"Every time I look at you, I want you more," Sam says truthfully, looking down at Dean's hand on his own skin. "I can see all the places I bit you, where I hurt you, and it's not enough. I think about the places I still want to bite you and all the ways I still haven't hurt you, and that won't be enough either. I can see all the marks, and it just makes me want to push you down and bite all the places I missed." 

Dean takes a breath. "And that's a bad thing how?" he asks. Sam looks up at him. Dean's brows are furrowed.

"It's not, you moron," Sam says breathlessly, and gasps out something that is half a laugh. "It just kind of hit me between the eyes."

"Bitch!" Dean says. "Don't call me a moron. And have your existential crisis quietly so I can clean you up."

"It wasn't a crisis," Sam says, and lets Dean dab at his chest with a little alcohol pad. He touches Dean's throat. "It was more like a tripwire."

Dean snorts and positions a pad of gauze over the spell. "Your metaphor's a little shaky there, Sammy," he says.

"This from the man that compared witchcraft to making butter," Sam says, and Dean rips a swath of adhesive tape off Sam's chest that he had _just stuck down_. "Ow!"

Dean blinks. "It was crooked," he says innocently.

"Oh, you lying..." Sam says, incensed, and reaches to flick Dean in the head, and abruptly they're kissing.

Sam is so surprised to find himself doing it that he just goes right along with it until he realizes Dean is laughing stealthily, just shaking a little and breathing hard, really, but in a way that totally means he's laughing at Sam. Sam pulls back and licks up the side of Dean's face from jaw to hairline.

"Dude!" Dean exclaims, disgusted, and Sam grins.


	12. 12

A while later, Dean is snoring softly in his bed, sleeping the sleep of the righteously fucked, and Sam is lying awake, not sleeping the not-sleep of the righteously conflicted. 

He thinks he knows. He thinks he gets it. Somewhere in that sprawling half-minute from when Dean's hand glanced off the spell on Sam's chest, not directly after, but not long, Dean had both retreated a little and opened up a little, and the fifth or sixth time Sam replayed it in his head, his mind circling the moment when it had changed, Sam had put his hands on the reason.

He is almost, almost sure.

Sam is fully aware that he has been operating on intuition and his basic, essential comprehension of who Dean is during the entire length of this thing. Lacking Dean's clearer understanding on the methodology, Sam has been doing what feels right, and he's been doing it well. Not with skill, not even with luck, but because he does know Dean. He gets Dean. The flashes of insight Sam has been occasionally beset with have all been in the moment, looking at Dean's face, watching him react to things, cause and effect situations.

He had known right up front that Dean wants it to hurt. Dean had told him the first time, in his way, and had deliberately kept telling him until Sam had a solid grasp on it. He didn't have to struggle for that knowledge.

He hadn't struggled for any of the other, smaller things, either. Dean either steered him carefully toward understanding, or Sam made those connections himself. Not exactly easily, but not with rational thinking, either. He had just known.

What Sam had done tonight, what he had managed to do to Dean, give to Dean, is more important than any of those other things. It's as big a deal as the pain. He knows because Dean told him. Dean had worked hard to talk to Sam about it, something that is deeply arduous for Dean, and that makes it more than important. That makes it vital.

Sam cannot afford to fuck this up.

It all makes sense, even the way it lines up neatly with Dean's need for pain, and Dean had told Sam that, too. That it wasn't just one thing, that there was something else, that what they are doing has as much to do with your head as your body. While Sam's body has been getting a lot of action, and even his head has been feeling it, Sam is pretty sure he can only really comprehend the difference because of what Dean had done to him earlier, that white, hot place Dean had pushed into Sam's mind. Or, not quite that. That place had already been there. Sam just hadn't known it. Dean had just built something, crafted a situation in which Sam could go there. Like the rest of it, Dean had lead him to it.

Sam has to be able to do that, and he has to be sure he's guiding Dean where he needs to go. It might be easier, because Dean already knows it's there, but he still needs Sam to push him in that direction, needs Sam to define it for him.

Looking back on what has already happened, Sam can even see the times when he's managed to do both, and Dean told him that, as well. Sam firmly understands that it had actually been Dean alone who had managed to do it those times. That Sam had unknowingly built the platform for it, but Dean had known how to jump. Sam also firmly understands that it will be better for Dean, will be _more_ , if he doesn't have to jump at all. If Sam knows how to push him.

Sam is almost sure.

What he doesn't know is what kind of damage he might do if he's wrong. He has no frame of reference for it. He doesn't know if it will be better, for both of them, if he waits until he is absolutely sure.

He suspects, though, that there is no such thing as absolutely sure, not unless Dean explicitly tells him. Sam can see why Dean hasn't told him, too. It isn't a push if Dean tells him. It's just Sam following directions. It would probably still be good, even great, but it's not the same. Sam will never forget being pressed against the door, will never lose the way it felt to have Dean drive him to the edge of understanding and then push him over.

Dean hadn't gotten to have that with the pain. Not from Sam. Dean had given that up so that they could have everything else, and Sam can't regret it. He doesn't think Dean regrets it. But Dean had held this part of it back, and Dean has been so canny about the rest of it that Sam feels reasonably sure that Dean had done it for this. So he will have the way it feels to have Sam take him there, and so Sam can have it as well.

And the last thing, which is both small and big, is the way it makes Sam's chest hurt, a deep, tight, ache, at what he's almost sure Dean wants. Needs. Sam is clear on the fact that it in no way reflects Dean's certainty in himself, his... his self-worth, for lack of a better term, but it still makes Sam ache in a way that nothing else so far has. It's his own hang-up, not Dean's, though. There is no way Sam will let that be a factor.

So he is conflicted.

He should do it now, he thinks. It's intuition combined with the understanding that it will get harder for _him_ if he doesn't. That he will worry the idea of it in his head and twist himself into knots over it, because he is no longer living in that space of time in which he'd successfully not thought deeply about any of it, had just let it happen. He can't just let this happen, he doesn't dare go into it blind and hoping he'll get it right. He knows enough to know that it wouldn't be safe for either of them.

He has to have a plan, and he does, sort of. Something solid enough that Sam doesn't feel like he's flying blind and flexible enough that he thinks he can roll with Dean's reactions. But he is scared, for the first time. He is wired with nerves. He is weighed down with the possibility that he might not get it right, and that he might not know how to deal with it, if that happens. 

He wishes he knew things, for the first time. He wishes he had let Dean tell him.

He doesn't move at all for a long time, his whole body tense and singing with apprehension. When he does move, finally, it's because of Dean. Dean had taken this chance that very first time. Dean had to have known Sam might not have been able to accept hurting Dean, might have been just dandy with incest, but absolutely unwilling to participate in the deliberate infliction of pain.

Because Dean and cowardice don't even live in the same hemisphere. There are a lot of ways in which Sam does not want to be like his brother, but that isn't one of them. He won't deny Dean this because Sam is a little afraid of it.

Sam slides out of bed and stands up, casting his gaze around the room.

Not on the bed, because this is not the same thing as fucking Dean. And not on the floor, because Sam knows that had been one of the times Sam had done it right without ever knowing it, and it's important that Dean is aware that Sam does know he's doing it. That this is deliberate. It doesn't leave a lot of options, but Sam will just have to use what he's got.

He's only half hard, so he works himself up to full mast and slicks up silently, in the dark. He cleans his hand off with whatever shirt is lying on the floor next to Dean's bed. He turns on the lamp. If he can't look at Dean while he's doing this, then he shouldn't be doing it at all.

Dean stops snoring and sits up, all at once, his face a little blurred with sleep, but his eyes alert. Sam slaps him flat again.

Dean stares at him, wide-eyed, but not that uncertain way Dean looks sometimes, when he's trying to figure out how to handle Sam. Just surprised. Something between Sam's shoulder blades loosens.

"Get up," Sam says, and Dean does, slowly, cautiously, like Sam is suddenly dangerous. When Sam takes a step back, Dean swings his legs over the side of the bed. Sam can feel him watching Sam's face, but Sam is watching for the bunch of Dean's thighs as he prepares to stand, and as soon as he sees it, he slaps Dean down again, sends him sprawling sideways across the mattress.

Dean is staring up at Sam with something like fear. Sam is almost sure that it's supposed to be there.

What good is it to be punished if you aren't a little afraid of it? 

God, he had better be right.

"Come here," Sam says tightly. Dean inches toward Sam, and now he is breathing in little hitches, now he is flushed and his eyes are still huge with shock, his brows drawn together above them in distress. Dean's cock is rigid, already getting wet. Sam can see his hand print across Dean's cheek. Sam knows that there are other ways to do this, but he can only use what he knows right now. Anything else wouldn't be safe. He'll figure it out later. "Come here, Dean," he repeats, when he decides Dean has been inching long enough.

Dean pushes himself toward Sam with both hands, like he can't not do it, though his face is still broadcasting fear and surprise and what Sam thinks is acceptance, though it is such a strangely pliable thing to see on Dean's face that he can't be certain of it. Sam lets Dean get to his feet this time. Dean sways a little, but just stands there and looks at Sam.

Sam raises his hand, and watches Dean watch it, sees a little flinch of confusion flicker through his eyes, and Sam hadn't been planning on doing any of this on intuition, meant to be logical about it, but he doesn't ignore it when it comes. "You hurt me," he tells Dean, because it makes sense, and it's the only explanation Sam's got.

What good is it to be punished if you don't know what you did wrong? 

Dean's face crumples into pained comprehension, and none of the rest of it goes away, the fear and acceptance are still there, he still looks almost stunned, as though he can't even believe this is happening, but he hitches in another breath and makes a tiny, sad sound that makes Sam ache.

Sam slaps him again, half in response to that bright little pain in Sam's chest, and Dean falls back loosely and lands splayed like a discarded toy. His mouth is bloody, but he gets an elbow up under him, turns a little, and pushes himself back toward Sam as though drawn. He wipes the blood away with the back of his hand, Sam doesn't think he's even aware of doing it, and gets his feet under him. He shoves himself upright, and catches Sam's arm briefly to steady himself, then lets go.

Sam doesn't even have to look for it. It's right there on Dean's face, in his too-bright, half glazed eyes, all need and yearning, nothing hidden at all, something deep and hurt that Dean needs Sam to help him with, some pain Dean can't soothe on his own, and there is something comforting about that. It relieves Sam of that aching tight place in his chest, because he doesn't want Dean to hurt like that, inside himself, and Sam can help. Sam can make that better, like this. With this. Sam hits him again, because Sam had never lied, he will do _anything_ , and Dean's knees buckle and Sam catches him up and holds him until Dean is steady again.

Sam wants to kiss him, he deeply wants to do something to comfort, and can't. That is not the point of this. It would defeat the purpose. 

"Turn around," Sam says roughly, and Dean does it unsteadily, but without question, without a sound. "Put your hands on the bed," Sam directs, and Dean bends at the waist and splays both hands onto the sheets. "Stay up," Sam tells him, and lines up his cock and pushes into Dean without stretching him, he is already open enough from the last time, and without stopping, which is harder, Dean is still loose but it's always going to be an effort. Sam isn't careless about it, but he is determined to do it, to take this small risk to give Dean something that is huge, and Sam can't even be concerned, he doesn't even feel ashamed at how good it is to have Dean like that, taking his cock with enough effort that Dean is grinding out broken, quiet sounds of pain, but not resisting at all, just taking it, all compliance because he thinks he, he, God, Dean thinks he deserves it. 

_Oh, Jesus,_ Sam thinks, and his eyes prickle a little, but he pulls back all the way and does it again, and it still feels so good Sam wants to scream, and Dean whines like there is some crackling sound caught in his throat. Sam stays quiet, but rocks back and then in again faster, and has to bite his lip not to moan at it, it is good, it is so good and Dean is so tight, there is not enough lube and Sam can feel it, how they are both burning. Dean is yelling a little with each thrust, a clipped-off cry, and it's not the same, punishing Dean with his cock is not the same thing as fucking Dean because Dean wants it, but it is still fucking amazing, it is blisteringly good, and Sam will deal with how it makes him feel because it isn't about him, and Dean needs it, Dean sounds like he is dying under Sam, all strangled groans almost loud enough to be shouts, all tension and his hands fisted in the sheets and Sam says, knowing, somehow wrestling his voice into being nearly level, "You deserve it, Dean," and Dean goes so tight that Sam couldn't stop himself from coming even under the threat of imminent death, and Dean comes too, silently, his body jolting in hard, quick movements 

As soon as they pass, Sam finds himself mostly holding Dean up by his hips. Sam ignores how shaky his own legs feel and leans forward and gets an arm under Dean's chest and hauls him upright. Dean falls against him, his head rocked back against Sam's shoulder, blank-faced, empty-eyed, breathing in so shallowly it's like he is sipping at the air. Sam isn't sure what is okay afterward, but he doubts it's to push Dean down onto the bed and kiss him and kiss him until Dean comes back to himself. He can't stop himself from just holding Dean against his chest, though, just for a minute, and presses his cheek against Dean's sweaty temple.

When he tucks Dean back into bed, Dean is still nearly insensible. Sam cleans him up, finds only a little blood, and then cleans himself up in the bathroom. When he comes out, he considers his empty bed for two and a half seconds, and then clicks off the lamp and climbs in with Dean.

Dean rolls right over to Sam, curls grasping hands into Sam's skin, and Sam pulls him in gratefully, gathers him up tight under Sam's chin and holds him there, where he can feel Dean's breath against his chest. Dean doesn't resist at all, just tucks his head down, and a very short time later Dean's breathing evens into sleep, and then into the familiar gentle snoring.

Sam can't really think about it. He needs a little time to settle it, he knows it.

He knows, though, that he had been telling the absolute truth when he had told Dean he deserved it. If Dean wants it, Dean deserves it, and it's okay with Sam if the words mean different things to him than they mean to Dean. As long as Sam knows it when he says it, then it's okay.


	13. 13

Sam wakes up first, mostly because he's too hot, and Dean's hand has landed on Sam's chest again. Dean had done it in his sleep all night, and Sam hadn't been able to bring himself to do anything about it besides blurrily think about the fact that it hurt and go back to sleep. He blinks at the ceiling for a moment, then realizes that he's too hot because he has all the blankets. Dean has one corner tucked over his ass and is otherwise curled into a sad little ball of heat conservation.

Sam untangles himself and tucks Dean in, and only decides to get up because he has to piss. Then he takes a shower, since he's in the bathroom anyway, and brushes his teeth, and peels the bandage off his chest and looks at the spell. Not only is it healing nicely, it's healing fast. It's surrounded by a bruise, which frankly isn't a surprise, but the bruise is the yellow and green of something far older, and the scabs over the cuts are thick. He pokes at it a little, and the pain isn't gone, but it doesn't feel like he Dean carved him up like a ham yesterday.

Sam makes a pot of hideous generic coffee in the tiny coffee maker, and drinks a cup black. He's pretty sure it's being directly absorbed by his bloodstream and thrust to his brain, bypassing his stomach entirely. He gets dressed quietly, and eats two cherry poptarts that don't entirely fill him up, and pours himself another cup of coffee.

He hears Dean stirring, and Sam takes him a cup of coffee. Dean scowls sleepily at Sam, and makes grabby hands at the coffee. Amused, Sam gives it to him and watches Dean practically stick his face into the cup. Dean struggles to the edge of the bed and to his feet, and then makes an unhappy face, probably at how sticky he is. "Shower," he tells Sam, and gives Sam back the half a cup of coffee. Sam takes it, amused, and dumps what's left into his own cup.

Then he sits down to check his e-mail, making his way absently through a blueberry NutriGrain bar. There are six from the coven. Two are from Cecily, with questions about specific theological entities that she's hoping Sam will be able to give her information on. One is from Edward, detailing everything he knows and guesses about the spell. Sam suspects Cecily had helped him compose it, because it's in the same clear, organized and bullet-pointed format of the notes for the information they had on Floyd and Robin. Sam skims it, but doesn't let himself become too involved. He'll have time later. He does shoot Edward a quick note back about Robin, light on details, but heavy on the fact that he's amenable to a meeting, and would like the opportunity to apologize and thank the coven, that he's working on a pure silver knife for them, and, oh, he might need some menstrual blood once a month. He guesses Edward will be calling Sam sometime today.

Two others are from Claire. One is an e-Thank You card. The other is an e-I'm Sorry card. Both of them make Sam smile.

One is from Chris. It says:

If you take highway 87 north to Cheyenne, and go west on highway 80, you'll be on 80 toward late evening. Don't let Dean wear his iPod. He is going to get you both killed if he wears it while he's driving. (Seriously.) You'll pass a sign that says RAWLINS 8 right after dark, and within 3/10ths of a mile there will be an unmarked paved road that turns north. If you take that road (I don't know for how long, it isn't really chronological like that) far enough that there are no streetlights or electrical poles, something will run out in front of you into the road. Don't hit it. It's a wolf or a dog, I think, but it's huge. It could be small, carnivorous horse, I suppose. You will see it, it will see you, and I see the headlights reflect from it's eyes, so I'm almost sure it's solid. Then it vanishes. I have no idea what it is, and I have no idea if it's something the two of you ought to look into.

But if you do, that's how it will go. You'd have to leave Denver by early afternoon, however, and neither of you strike me as particularly early risers.

Have fun,

Chris.

The computer clock tells Sam it's a quarter past ten. Dean is in the shower (singing _Shit Is Fucked Up_ , apparently as loudly as he is capable of), and will be out in less than five minutes.

Sam's hands hover over the keyboard.

It sounds like a black dog to Sam, if he had to make a guess knowing nothing else. They're pretty commonly sighted, and they aren't necessarily evil. But they're well-documented as being a precursor to terrible events, often supernatural events, though not always. There are hundreds of stories that start out with, "Right before it happened, I saw this enormous black dog..."

Sam's hands hesitate some more.

It could easily be nothing. Sometimes black dogs don't mean anything. And even if it does, how are they supposed to figure out what they're doing somewhere near Rawlins in the middle of the night based on nothing but the fact that a black dog is going to be there? How the hell is Sam supposed to predict what unknown bad thing is going to happen and where it will be and when and...?

Dean stops singing in the shower.

Sam sighs and rests his wrists on the laptop.

This is not about how obscure the information is. They have done more with less.

It's about Dean, and about how it feels when Sam curls his hands around Dean's body and sees Dean's skin sheened with sweat and hears Dean saying Sam's name.

It's about having the time to do that all he wants, until he finds out everything, and he doesn't feel so much clawing hunger every time Dean tips his head or taps his thumb on the steering wheel or says Sam's name.

Which may be approximately never, Sam suspects, because the two of them are the kind of men that have taken their father's obsession and made it into their own, have made it the focus of their whole lives. And, yes, there are reasons, circumstances, mitigating factors, but that obsession is the backbone of it, the basic _ability_ to obsess like that. Sam and Dean both have it. And it is too late to tear out that bedrock now. 

They can't afford another obsession. Sam knows it, and knows it doesn't matter if they can afford it or not. They have it, it's already theirs. They're going to have to learn to live with it, to work with it, and they have to exercise some fucking restraint. They have to do their job and fuck later, no matter how sulky that makes Sam feel, and damn it, Dean is going to be sulky, too. Dean is going to be a total dick about this in that exact way that makes Sam grind down the enamel on his teeth until he wants to smack Dean in the head, and Dean will fucking _needle_ him about it, too, because Dean can always tell when Sam is getting ticked off, and...

Dean comes out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, his skin pink with warmth and still liberally decorated with the marks of Sam's teeth, and knocks Sam right out of the familiar, irritable headspace that Dean being petulant always pushes him into. Dean is whistling _Shit Is Fucked Up_ now, and he's putting on deodorant, which, while Sam is grateful for, is not something that should be making Sam thicken in his jeans. Dean tends to both armpits, smacks the cap back onto the deodorant, and tosses it overhand behind him diagonally, where it lands unerringly in Dean's open duffel with enough force that a pair of Dean's socks flip up along one edge and half-conceal it. Apparently, this is so effortless and certain for Dean that he doesn't even check to see if he made it in.

He sails along his current trajectory, still whistling, until he's standing right beside Sam, then he stops whistling and picks up Sam's half-eaten blueberry NutriGrain bar and eats the whole thing in one bite.

"Jerk!" Sam says, reflexively.

Dean grins, and says, "Bitch!" all jumbled around breakfast bar, but somehow without spraying Sam with crumbs.

Entirely without thinking, Sam draws back his left hand and swats Dean on the ass. He doesn't mean anything by it. He used to do it to Jess, hell, he and Dean used to do it to each other when they were young, though Dean had had an unfair advantage of four years for most of that.

It's stupid, though, because it pulls at his chest hard, and he curls his right hand over the bandage there automatically, and he almost misses how still Dean has gone. When he looks up, Dean is looking down uncertainly at him. Sam watches him swallow a couple of times, then hands Dean his coffee without comment. Dean drinks about half of it and hands it back.

"That doesn't work for me," Dean says, almost casually. 

Sam thinks it does _something_ , or Dean wouldn't have reacted as immediately. 

"Okay," is all he says, though, because he isn't interested in fixing Dean, even if this is some kind of hang up Sam doesn't really grasp the meaning of. If it starts to really bug Sam, maybe he'll bring it up in one of their middle of the night chats sometime, or maybe he won't. He is still not all that keen on knowing the details of Dean's previous kinky sex life, in spite of reaping the secondhand benefits of the knowledge in a general sense. If it's important, then Dean will probably tell him at some point.

However. "Tell me nothing freaky and bad happened," he says, not quite able to stop himself.

Dean looks so puzzled that Sam is instantly relieved. Then Dean's face clears, and he smiles a little. "Nothin’ like that," he says, a little amused. "I hunt monsters for a livin', Sam. At no point was I ever in a position to let anyone do anything freaky-bad to me." He gives Sam a little shrug, his face almost sheepish. "I'm too paranoid for that, and there just aren't that many regular people that could do anything to me if I was really set against it."

Which is absolutely true, of course. Dean, just like Sam, can pretty much tear through your average person like a paper doll, if he really wants to.

"Yeah, okay," Sam says, prepared to drop the whole thing. He opens his mouth to tell Dean about Chris' e-mail, but then Dean interrupts him.

"It just don't work for me. I mean, I thought it would, considering, and it wasn't bad, it was just. Kinda fun, but in a playin’ way." Dean reaches across Sam and paws at the box of NutriGrain bars to snag one for himself. Sam smells Dean's soap and deodorant, and resists the urge to bite the unmarked curve Dean's biceps.

It occurs to Sam that Dean's reaction hadn't really been about Dean at all. It had been about Sam. Dean thinks Sam might be disappointed in some way, and Sam doesn't really want to know the details, but it's not a big deductive leap to conclude that someone, at some point, had been disappointed. Sam had been thinking he had mostly come to terms with the fact that Dean had had something with someone serious enough that Dean had learned a lot about this. That Dean had been working them slowly and carefully through the possibilities, probably from the first time Sam had fucked him. Sam is unexpectedly smacked in the face again with jealousy and a vague feeling of malice toward whomever it had been.

He stands up and takes the breakfast bar out of Dean's hand and puts it on the table.

"Dude!" Dean objects, and looks at Sam with irritable confusion.

Sam smiles a little at Dean's pissy face, and puts a hand on Dean's shoulder, pressing his thumb gently against the scabbed over bite mark there. All the irritability drains out of Dean, and his expression becomes speculative.

"You wanna...?" Dean asks, leaving the question open-ended so Sam can fill in the blank.

"No," Sam says reluctantly. "I think we've got a job. I'll show you in a minute."

"Okay," Dean says, frowning with familiar truculence, but not arguing, which is better than Sam had been expecting.

Maybe it shouldn't have been, though, when Sam thinks about it. The two of them have been better at everything since they've been sleeping together. Their overall interaction has remained pretty much the same, their day to day lives not much different, so Sam just hadn't really put it together, but he can see it fairly clearly in retrospect. They fit together better, their jagged edges still present, but muted. They bitch and bicker, but there isn't really any venom in it. Not like there had been sometimes. It hasn't been that long at all, but Sam is already beginning to forget what it had felt like to be filled with bitter resentment and undirected anger all the time. He doesn't miss it a bit.

"I don't want to do anything you hate," Sam says, "and if you don't want to, I'll never bring it up again. But I have a hunch."

"A hunch," Dean repeats. He doesn't look dubious or reluctant at all, just curious. "What hunch?"

Sam smirks a little, and borrows a page from Dean's book. "I'd rather show you."

Dean, with absolutely no shame -- Sam knows this, and has had ample time to observe it in the recent past, but it's still just a little unexpected every time, a little thrilling -- drops his towel and turns around. He looks over his shoulder at Sam expectantly.

Sam considers moving this to the bed, and then remembers the e-mail. Feeling a little sulky about it, Sam just turns the chair he'd been sitting in around a little, and puts his left foot up on the crossbar between the legs. "C'mere. Lean forward." Dean turns and leans a little forward against Sam's thigh without having to be directed. Sam braces an arm around Dean's chest. "Lean forward more. I can take your weight." Dean looks at him, and now he's blushing a little, but he leans against Sam's arm, and Sam holds him up. It puts Dean up on his tiptoes. Sam cups a hand around a cheek of Dean's ass, and Dean's cock is poking him in the thigh, smearing precome across Sam's skin.

It's a little reassuring. The idea, clearly, is to Dean's taste. It makes sense, and reaffirms the shape of the suspicion in his head.

"I don't think it was you," Sam tells Dean seriously. Dean starts to turn to look at Sam's face, but Sam says, "No, look at the floor." Dean does. He is blushing even more now. "Can you tell me what it was that didn't work? Can you pinpoint it?" 

"No?" Dean says, like he's unsure. "It didn't really hurt much," he tells Sam slowly, like he's trying to give the question real consideration. "But that doesn't always matter. It just... didn't feel right. Not bad, just not..."

"Not what you needed it to be," Sam finishes for him. Dean doesn't actually reply to that, but his blush creeps down his neck, and Sam is sure he is right about this. All signs point to Dean approving of the idea, which means it's a matter of execution, and Sam is bizarrely okay with this. It doesn't make Sam's chest ache; it's not scary or even uncomfortable. He's already a little turned on, and he doesn't feel at all bad about it. "Dean, I'm bigger than you," Sam says. "I'm stronger." Dean opens his mouth, this is a familiar point of contention, and Sam shifts his arm down enough that Dean's toes actually leave the floor. Sam holds him up with one arm and his leg, and it isn't particularly hard. Sam is braced for it, he has leverage. Dean's hands go up to grip the edge of the table. "No," Sam says. "You can touch me. Nothing else." 

Dean's hands tighten on the table for a second, and then he lets go and curls both hands around Sam's supporting arm. Dean's breathing hard, and his cock is sliding along the underside of Sam's thigh, bent at a downward angle by the position Sam has him in. "Don't pull too hard at my arm," Sam warns him. "If you unbalance yourself and I drop you, I'm going to be pissed off." Sam doesn't actually think this will happen, but it has the desired effect. Dean's hands clench briefly around Sam's arm, and then his grip loosens to something meant to help Dean stay balanced. Dean stops trying to hold his head up and just lets it hang down. "If you hate it, you tell me as soon as you know," Sam warns. "If you let me do something to you that you hate, I'm going to be _really_ pissed off."

Dean doesn't say anything for a long moment, and when he does, it isn't in relation to Sam's warning. It's a little strangled, but Sam understands him just fine. "Why?"

Sam doesn't pretend not to understand. The punishment thing is way weirder for Sam than the pain thing. He hasn't had enough time to process it, or maybe it's just that he genuinely doesn't feel like Dean ought to be punished, but he gets that he can't treat it as lesser because of that. He can't ignore it, and he definitely can't make it about bullshit things. He's pretty sure Dean will rarely ask him this question. He won't have to cite details. Although he already thinks sometimes Sam will, that at some point there will be something and Sam will feel justified. And he's sure it will be the best when it's like that. When Dean knows that Sam is justified.

But it doesn't always have to be, or this would never work on anyone, so. It doesn't have to be anything big. It just has to be something that rings true to Dean. Sam is certain that whomever had not made this work for Dean had fucked it up because they hadn't really understood Dean. He won't accept bullshit. It doesn't mean anything to Dean if it isn't real in his mind, if he can't relate whatever reason he's given to something he knows. Dean wants it, but it has to mean something to him.

And at the moment, there is only one thing Sam is a little unhappy about, in relation to Dean. He isn't angry, but he doesn't have to be. He doesn't want Dean to do anything differently, but that doesn't matter.

It's all about Dean being able to recognize it as real.

"You keep secrets from me," Sam says calmly. "There are things I want to know that you won't tell me. I've asked more than once, and you keep telling me no."

Dean sucks in a breath, and Sam is satisfied with that. Dean doesn't offer up any excuses, though Sam is fully aware that Dean has reasons, maybe good ones. That doesn't matter. Not for this.

Sam draws back and smacks Dean's ass as hard as he can. He doesn't stop at one, and he can tell immediately that this would be better, will work better in the future, if Dean is positioned so that Sam can get the full weight of his body behind it, but he _is_ stronger than Dean, and he is almost certainly stronger than whomever had done this to Dean before, and he's sure it will be enough. So he doesn't stop at all until he hears Dean make a small, choked sound, and then he pauses. He listens to the way Dean is breathing in tight, hitching little gasps. He can't see Dean's face, but he can see the flush on the back of Dean's neck and he can feel the tremors in Dean's body.

Dean's ass is bright red, and Sam's palm is tingling. And this is really working for Sam. He hadn't expected to hate it, but he hadn't really expected it to do much beyond getting to see Dean naked, which is reason enough by itself. Sam keeps being surprised at how much of this is so insanely good, no matter which of them it's ultimately tailored to suit. He doesn't think it's just Dean's reaction, either, though that is always, always gorgeous. There is definitely something about having Dean like this, his big brother tipped over his thigh and shuddering, something powerful and a little hard-edged that Sam wants.

Sam waits until Dean's breathing calms a little, until Dean says, hoarse and cracked, "Are you, are you done?" all hesitance and uncertainty, so out of place in Dean's tone that it sends a deep pulse of heat through Sam's body, pooling at his groin.

Sam starts again.

Dean chokes out another thick sound, and then, like something breaking, he groans a little under each flat smack of Sam's hand, a sound less of pleasure or pain and more of satisfaction. Sam's cock jerks in his jeans, some kind of recognition of success, because this is it, he knows, this is exactly right, and Dean's body starts to do things Sam is pretty sure Dean himself isn't really aware of, rocking back into Sam's hand, and Sam doesn't say anything about it because it's not enough to unbalance him, and this uncalculated response is the reason for Dean. If Sam could see his face, Dean would be dazed and far away, lost in his own head with Sam's hands tethering him to the world, and that's how it's supposed to work.

"Sammy," Dean whispers finally, strangled but sincere, "Sorry, Sam, I'm sorry," and it's a wet, hot sob of sound, and a burst of rough lust ignites at the base of Sam's spine even as it feels like a strobe light illuminates the inside of Sam's head, and the illusion that it is punishment that Dean is after dissolves, and it's not that at all. It looks like that, yes, and maybe it's almost the same, but the difference is crucial.

It's _penance_ , Dean wants. To pay for what he's done so that he can let it go. 

And Dean doesn't know. 

Sam leaves his hand lying along the curve of Dean's ass for a long moment, absorbing that, and then lifts his arm enough to get Dean's feet back on the floor. Dean's knees buckle briefly, and Sam keeps his thigh firmly under Dean's ribs and keeps him upright. After a few wobbly seconds, Dean recovers his equilibrium. He isn't looking at Sam at all, his face tipped down and turned away, but Sam can see that his face is wet. Dean is still shaking.

Sam puts his foot down and pulls Dean into him, and suddenly things Sam hadn't even really known didn't make sense make so much sense that Sam can't believe he didn't understand it earlier. Dean catches himself against Sam's chest with both hands, one carefully below the spell, and he pushes back for a second, away. Sam does not allow it. He kisses Dean's forehead and wraps both arms around him. Dean, as though he can't help it, leans into Sam, his forehead tucked into the curve of Sam's neck and shoulder. "It's okay," Sam murmurs into his ear, and kisses the upper curve of it. "You were so good, Dean," he whispers, kind of amazed at the way Dean feels, his weight bent willingly into Sam's embrace.

Sam can't say he forgives Dean, because Dean doesn't really believe in forgiveness that way. It has to be something else, something specific, but not that pointed, and... "You're good," Sam says, he intuits it, and apparently that's right because Dean's shaking settles into little shivers and more of his weight presses against Sam. Sam squeezes him briefly, but lets go and grasps Dean's shoulders, setting him a little away. If he holds onto Dean until Dean is really back in control, Dean will be uncomfortable with it. Dean looks at him this time, still a little dazed. Sam doesn't think he knows he's silently crying, and doesn't mention it. He repeats, "You're good, now," and Dean nods slowly. "You should get back in the shower for a minute and rinse off," Sam tells him, because he thinks, at least for now, that the aftermath of this should be private. He should let Dean get himself back together without Sam looking on.

He picks up Dean's towel and hands it to him. Dean takes it and goes back to the bathroom without a word.

Sam jerks his jeans open and wraps a supporting hand around the back of the chair, one knee propped up on the seat, and jerks off, quick and hard. It takes about four strokes, and he lets out a little moan as he comes, catching it automatically with his free hand as though he was a teenager again, jerking off in bed and trying not to make a mess. Then he stands there and breathes heavily for a minute or so. Eventually, he wipes his hand on the bedspread of Dean's bed, because more come on that bed is certainly not going to make a difference at this point, tucks himself back into his underwear and buttons up. He uses a wet wipe to clean the residual stickiness off his hand.

The shower is going, and Sam is pretty sure Dean is jerking off in there, but he isn't concerned about it.

The next time this happens, there will probably be sex afterward, but this time Dean was caught pretty much flat-footed. He hadn't known it would be like that, and sex after would have just cluttered it up in his head. Dean wouldn't have even thought to object, had Sam aimed it in that direction, but that doesn't make it the right way to go. Sam doesn't know about this the same way that Dean does, but he does know Dean, and Dean will need some distance from something so unexpectedly emotional. He won't be okay with it unless he has some time to get some perspective.

Sam is happy to give it to him, because Sam wants to do that again. He wants Dean fully on board with it, not confused or embarrassed, so Sam has to treat it as though it was nothing for now. He has to go about business as usual and head off Dean's inevitable discomfort at the pass by pretending it doesn't exist.

He's a little amused at both of them, honestly. Dean is totally okay with it when he's thinking about it as punishment, but there is no way Dean is going to remain mistaken or misinformed or whatever about it. Dean is light years from stupid, and he knows what he's doing here. He's going to be far more uncomfortable with the idea of penance. Sam, on the other hand, is far more comfortable with penance than he probably ever would have been with punishment. Sam understands penance, knows what it feels like to need it. And the aftermath of punishment is just violence ended. The aftermath of penance is peace. There is a difference. It matters.

Sam turns the chair back around to face the table and settles into it. He starts all the routine searches for weirdness around Rawlins, Wyoming, and the ordinary rhythm of it settles him. He eats Dean's NutriGrain bar as he reads. He hears Dean come out of the bathroom, and carries on with what he's doing. He is very aware of the fact that the first few times, the first three or four, Dean had done this for him. Dean had worked hard to make everything else the same so that Sam would have time to process.

The thick, hot press of love in Sam's chest isn't at all unexpected.

Dean doesn't come over until he's dressed. Once Sam can see him out of the corner of his eye, he says, "The coven e-mailed me, a bunch of them. Mostly about random stuff, but there's one from Chris. Take a look."

He swings the laptop around toward Dean, and Dean comes over without hesitating, and Sam relaxes.

"Black dog, you think?" Dean asks when he's finished, and Sam nods. "You find anything?"

"One thing, maybe," Sam says, and clicks another tab, and watches Dean read the news article he'd found from two days ago in Rawlins.

"Packs," Dean says, brows drawn into a frown. "Packs of black dogs. That. That can't be good, Sammy. You got anything on this happening before?"

"Multiple sightings by individual people of individual dogs, but nothing like this," Sam says. "Nothing with them gathering like this, so that a bunch of people see several of them at once? You?"

Dean doesn't actually answer; he reaches across Sam and picks up Dad's journal. There's something tight and stark on his face that Sam doesn't like, but he can almost feel the way Dean has shut down, and knows better to ask. Not yet, anyway. "You keep lookin', I'll see if Dad knew anything. Maybe give Bobby a call."


	14. 14

Sam finds nothing at all. He combs through everything that's happened in Rawlins and the surrounding area for the last dozen years, and when he gets nothing from that, he calls the local library and the local newspaper. According to everything he can find, Rawlins is just an ordinary town. It isn't until he's visiting a tourist site -- _a tourist site_ \-- that Sam stumbles across Rawlins Frontier Prison Museum.

Sam starts his searches over, this time with an eye to anything involving the old prison, but, aside from being kind of disturbing, it has never showed any signs of haunting. They give tours, there. They let people sit in the gas chamber, which, God, all joking aside, Sam _would never_ even consider risking. They show people the punishment pole, the hole, the gallows.

"Shit is fucked up," Sam murmurs, and calls back the library. The librarian he talks to, Julie, is happy to fill him in on everything she knows, and when Sam mentions coming into town to take a look, even offers to pull everything for him so that it's right where he can get at it.

"We need to get to Rawlins by six," Sam tells Dean, and gets up to start shoving shit into various duffel bags. Dean takes a look at Sam, and gets up and starts hauling it to the Impala.

On the last trip, he says, "What about Chris' e-mail?"

"We've already proven we can change things," Sam says. "With my visions and with Chris'. Maybe we can head this off at the pass."

"You think it's the prison?"

"I can't find anything else it might be," Sam complains, but Dean is right to be dubious. The fact of its existence doesn't make the place inherently evil. Horrifying, yes, evil, not so much. "And it's a place to start. Did you find anything in Dad's journal?"

Dean's mouth is a tight line. "I'll tell you while we drive."

Dean doesn't tell Sam, though; at least not immediately. First, he calls Bobby.

Sam can only hear half the conversation, Dean relating facts in a flat, steady voice, until Dean says, "There's something in Dad's journal, Bobby. The corruptor. Do you--" Dean stops talking, but Sam can hear Bobby yelling at Dean on the other end of the line, even over the growl of the Impala's engine. "I know," Dean says tightly, once Bobby shuts up. "I was there, that ain't what I'm asking." Bobby yells again. This time Sam can make out the words _idjits_ and _impossible_ and _brain-damaged_. Dean's mouth continues to get firmer, and Sam watches the muscle in his jaw jumping. "We gotta go," Dean finally says. "You know we do." Bobby says something Sam can hear, but not quite make out. "Packs of 'em," Dean says. "Running a-fucking-mok, Bobby. You know the death toll on that kinda action. You want us to let that go on?" Dean is beginning to sound outraged, and Sam is starting to feel sick to his stomach.

There is a long pause. "Sam found an old prison, he thinks it... You're shitting me?"

Dean listens. "Dad's notes fucking suck," he says finally, but he just sounds tired when he says it. "Yeah, but I was fucking sixteen," Dean says, like he'd like to be pissed off, but doesn't have the emotional fortitude to bother with it. "All I was doing was trying not to get dead."

He listens to Bobby for another minute. "Once a fucking lifetime my ass," he grumbles at one point. "Yeah," he says finally. "Yeah, Bobby. I'll call you if we ain't dead or evil."

"Dead or evil," Sam repeats once Dean has flipped his phone closed.

He is not at all happy at the sound of that.

Dean pulls over.

"Drive for a while," Dean says, and gets out without another word. Sam slides over into the driver's seat, and Dean walks around and gets in the other side. He immediately opens Dad's journal and bends his head over it. Sam drives, that sinking feeling in his belly sinking even lower. "Okay, Sam. Listen: 'The black moon, a phantasm in negative space.' What does that sound like to you?"

"Can I get some context?" Sam asks, turning the phrase over in his mind, picking at it already.

"In a minute. Dad's fucking notes..." Dean mutters.

"A black moon could be a new moon," Sam says, "but we just passed it. It was yesterday. It could mean an eclipse, but the closest we get this year are penumbral eclipses, and they were both in March, and were barely visible in North America."

"How do you even keep shit like that in your head?" Dean asks absently, flipping back and forth between two pages in Dad's journal. Sam shrugs, but he doesn't think Dean notices.

"A phantasm can be another word for a ghost or an apparition, but it can also mean just an idea. Neither of those exist in real space, not in any solid way, so a phantasm in negative space could mean one with a solid form, a real presence on this plane. Those are Dad's notes, really? Because he wasn't usually... cryptic."

"I know, right?" Dean says absently. "I think most of this is stuff he found after we did the job. He's got a list of what went down, but it's like he didn't know what really happened, so he just wrote it all down, and the rest of it is like fucking code."

Sam, who is familiar with how that works sometimes, is sympathetic, but Dean's irritability is contagious or something, and he finds himself aggravated with their father by proxy.

"Okay, how about: 'Unstained earth, hollowed."

"Hollowed?" Sam asks. "Not hallowed?"

"No, definitely hollowed," Dean says, sounding frustrated.

"Could just be a hole, then, or a cave. Unstained could be untainted, or even just untouched by man. Or it could mean hallowed or consecrated, too. It could be both, hallowed and hollowed. How far down does consecrated earth go? How far would you have to dig to get past it?" This is actually a thought Sam has had before, but he's never really been in a position to test it.

Dean gives a thoughtful little nod. "No, yeah," he says. "That could make sense. What about this: 'Lilith's arc braces the threshold.'"

Sam pulls over. "Give me that," he demands, and Dean hands it over without protest.

"Lilith," Sam mutters. "Lilith." That rings some bells, and he automatically recites what he knows while he scans what Dad has written down. "Adam's first wife, wind demon, succubus, daughter of the sky god, daughter of heaven, associated in Mesopotamia with Alu, a dog-demon, there could be a connection with the black dogs, there, she steals children, adults too, sometimes, she's in every religion known to mankind in some form or another, not always evil, but always malevolent." Sam pauses to flip a page forward. "'Lilith's arc braces the threshold,'" he murmurs, and scans the rest of it quickly. "'True sight is overmade, the dark solid under her wings.' The hand of Inanna, sent into the streets to lead men astray. Hmm." Sam flips back to the first page. "When they found the Dead Sea Scrolls," Sam tells Dean absently, "they mentioned lilith as a diminutive, as though she was a classification rather than a singular. There was an exorcism ritual designed to expunge her. "'Her house sinks down to death, and her course leads to the shades.'" Sam reads. "'All who go to her cannot return and find again the paths of life.' That's from Proverbs, word for word." 

He glances at Dean, and Dean is watching him with a little smile. "How do you keep all this shit in your head?" he asks again, but it sounds fond this time.

"Listen, he's got a list of Lilith's names: lilith, abitu, abizu, hakash, avers hikpodu, ayalu, matrota, yalqut Reubeni, zohar. They may not matter, but try to remember them."

He sits back against the seat, and hardly notices when Dean opens the door and drags him bodily over to the passenger side. "I'm missing something. I've almost got it," he mutters.

Dean gets back behind the wheel and starts them back toward Rawlins.

"Something about the moon. I need some wi-fi."

Sam reads and rereads and frowns and stews at it, and at some point he realizes what Dean had actually said, that he and Dad had done this job before, or something like it.

"What is it?" Sam asks, and Dean looks over at him. "A corruptor? What does that mean? What did Bobby say?"

"Bobby said stay out of it," Dean says flatly, his eyes on the road now. "And my hand to God, Sam, I barely remember that job. You were twelve, you remember? We was kinda settled outside Seattle for a while."

"When you came home with three broken ribs and a concussion," Sam demands, immediately tense. "The job you didn't wake up for three days after? This is _that_ job?"

Dean nods tightly. "It could be," Dean says. "It could be something else altogether, but. The black dogs running in packs. We didn't know that, then, or I just don't remember it, but Dad has it down. Could be he found out later."

"You were _burned_ ," Sam says, feeling helplessly, furiously terrified. "So was Dad, you were both..." Sam runs out of words articulate enough to confine the shape of his fear at how they had looked, the two of them, Dad staggering back into the house with Dean in his arms, how Sam had lived in terror for the three days that Dean had lain there, dead to the world, ashen and hurt. "Okay," Sam says finally, unsteadily. "Tell me exactly what you remember. Tell me everything, even if you don't think it's important."

Dean is silent for a little while, but Sam can tell he's just thinking how to tell it, so he waits as patiently as he can.

"A couple hundred miles north of Seattle there was this little town, two hundred people or so. It was just bad luck, really. We weren't there because we knew something was going on. We were looking for a guy who might know something about something else altogether. I don't even remember what, now."

"That was February," Sam says, because he will never forget it. He remembers Dad's breath making clouds in the air, and the steam wafting up from Dean's open mouth, the only thing that had kept Sam on the edge of reason at that moment, the thing that proved that Dean was still alive.

Dean nods. "It was just at dusk," Dean says. Then, with a weird, hurt little smile, he adds, "We stopped in at this roadside diner and we were just having some pie, Sammy." He looks at Sam for a second, and then back at the road. "Just having some fuckin’ pie, and when the lights went out, nobody freaked. It was a little bitty town. They probably had shit like that happen sometimes. Dad didn't even look worried. But I could feel something crawling on my skin, something pulling at me. It gets." Dean stops, and swallows. "It gets weird after that. Fuzzy. I was going someplace, I remember thinking it was important. Everybody else was going, too, not just me." He cocks his head a little. "Not everybody. Some people weren't, and I know Dad wasn't. He was just following me. I remember him talking, but I don't know what he said."

Dean takes a breath. "I can't remember it right. I don't know where it was or exactly what it looked like. In my head, it was a good place, someplace that would make me strong. I remember Dad was shooting at stuff, but I don't know what it was."

Sam doesn't know either, but Dean and Dad had both been covered in blood when they'd come back that night. Not just streaked with it, but splattered with blood and gore, not just liquid, but _pieces_. Even now, Sam doesn't think too hard about what it might have been.

"I can remember feeling it when we got closer," Dean says. "Not what it looked like, but I knew it anyways. All I wanted was to go into the dark. All I wanted in the world, and there were other people doing it, and they came away from it glowing like they had stars under their skin. I remember Dad trying to stop me. I remember fighting him, but it wasn't like I was trying to kill him. I was just trying to get him off me so I could get to it. I don't remember how I got the broken ribs, but I know how I got the concussion. Dad clocked me in the head with the butt of a shotgun. That's all of it. All I remember."

"And what did Dad tell you later?" Sam asks, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

Dean sighs. "That I didn't hear him. That that place I was headed to was all covered in fog up to his thighs, and the people coming away from it weren't bothering with me, but were doing their level best to kill the hell out of him. That they were dusted all over in sulphur, like they rolled around in it, and that they talked to him some. That they seemed almost right, and none of 'em seemed possessed and they didn't react to holy water at all. That he had to kill some of 'em, and they fell and died like regular people, didn't just shrug it off like a demon would. That there was a sound like rushing water, and that he was afraid if we got any closer he wouldn't be able to get us out again, get us back to the car, so he bashed me in the head and carried me outta there, Sam."

"We can't go," Sam says immediately. "We can't go there, not if something like that could happen to you."

Dean says nothing for a long moment. "That town," he says finally. "It's gone now. Abandoned. But a hundred and two people died that night. Some people just went missin', gone without any reason, but Dad tracked that area for months, Sam. We moved on as soon as I could get my ass outta bed, but he kept tabs on it for months, and every bad thing one person can do to another went through the roof anyplace close to it. It died down after a while, but for months, those things, human looking things, not demons, but not people anymore, those things spread out and butchered their way through everyplace they could reach."

Dean looks over at Sam with bleak eyes. "How many people live in Rawlins?"

"Almost ten thousand," Sam says, mouth and throat dry. "Jesus."

Dean merely nods.

"And corruptor," Sam says. "Dad came up with that?"

"Yeah, I guess. He never came across anything that gave it a name, and I know he looked. The stuff he's got written down, I think he pieced it together, maybe him and Bobby, so maybe none of it's right. But it's what we got."

Sam nods. "Okay," he says, because Dean is right. This is what they do, and neither one of them is equipped to walk away from something like this. "Okay," he repeats. "I need wi-fi, and we need a plan."

***

The wi-fi is easily come by. They get to the library a little after four, and Sam makes Dean pretend to study the stuff on the prison that they are now fairly certain has nothing to do with anything.

Sam mutters to himself, a habit that Dean usually mocks him for, but every time Sam looks up, Dean is watching him and looking... confident. Reassured. Like it matters that Sam is there, that he is certain of Sam's ability to get them through this somehow.

No pressure.

Sam finds so much information on Lilith that he just wades headlong through it, trying to make connections to the phrases Dad's journal had quoted. He finds references to her wings, 'true sight is overmade, the dark solid under her wings' could refer to her ability to project illusions, or could even refer to the hundreds of guises ascribed under her name.

He switches back and forth between Lilith and the other straggling bits of quotes, and Sam really wishes Dad had bothered to do things like cite sources, which would make this kind of research a hell of a lot easier.

He discovers, with much eye-strain, that there is a term hollowed ground, that it's incredibly obscure, but it is largely believed to mean a place where there is no natural thing, a place that the earth herself rejects as barren. Sam has never even heard of it. He can barely get his mind around the idea of the possibility of it. He needs more information, so he jots it down and gives Dean a pen and the notebook and sends him outside to call Bobby, whose occult library is two hundred times what Sam has space for in the car.

He thinks unstained earth is just blank earth, something undeveloped and untouched, but it's speculation.

He goes back to Lilith, and is reading about the exorcism in the Dead Sea scrolls because he can't see how it could hurt to know it when the thing that's been prickling at the back of his brain since the car barges right through to the front of his brain.

"Lilith," Sam breathes, and is so sure he can't type, and has to enter 'lilith' and 'moon’ into the search field three times to get it right.

"It's a moon," he whispers to Dean when Dean appears again, the notepad Sam had given him covered in Dean's familiar scrawl of handwriting. "It's a hypothetical moon, a half dozen different astronomers have tried and failed to prove the existence of it, but Dean, I _don't think it's there all the time._ "

"What's a moon? What are you talking about?" Dean whispers back.

"Lilith," Sam says, and turns the laptop toward Dean. "Lilith. I'll be right back." 

He stops on the front steps of the library and calls Edward. "I need to know about Lilith, Lilith the moon, not the rest of it, what do you know?" 

"It has to be summoned," Edward says at once. "We don't use her, white witches, I mean, nothing good can be done under her light, but it's pretty common in black covens to try. I've never heard of it working, just old legends. I think it'll only come if the summoning is perfect, every element lined up, but I don't know. I'm guessing. It's supposed to be a... a support. A buttress for whatever you're trying to accomplish. Mystically speaking, it doesn't actually lend assistance, it just creates a space in which you can work. I'm not an expert on this, Sam. I don't think anybody in the coven could tell you anything else."

"Is there a ritual, something that has to be done, anything that might help us recognize something meant to summon her if we saw it?"

"I don't know," Edward says, dismayed. "We don't learn about things like that, our sense of potential fallibility is too great."

"You guys don't give yourselves enough credit," Sam says. He's a little frustrated, but he's also not been deliberately using his psychic powers for half a year, so he gets it. "It's okay, that's something," Sam says. "Thank you, it should be enough. I'll call you later."

"Wait, Sam," Edward says. "If someone is summoning Lilith, that is just a means. Think of it like a bridge. Whatever it is they're actually trying to do has to require a huge amount of power if they need Lilith to do it. If it's black witches, Sam, it could be any number of monstrous things, but whatever it is, it will be awash with power. It will be strong. Do you need us to come there? I don't know what we could do, but we can come, we can try."

"No," Sam says quickly. He doesn't want the coven anywhere near this. If any of them have the same response as Dean had, if Sam and Dean _can't_ end whatever it is, their presence can probably only cause the coven harm. They could turn black, all of them, but even if only one of them did, it would break the coven. And if it's Claire... "No, Edward, I don't think you can help, and that means you can only get in the way. I'm sorry, that sounds so shitty, and I'm sorry, but it's better if you stay away. It's safer."

"No, Sam," Edward says. "It doesn't sound shitty. I understand." He sounds mournful. "I understand. Try to be safe. Tell Dean to try to be safe."

"We will," Sam says. "We will, Edward. Thanks."

Sam hangs up and calls Bobby. "I am not you boys' damned librarian," Bobby says grumpily, but Sam can already hear him rifling through pages and banging books around. "And tell your damned brother that hollowed ground can only happen where holy ground butts up against unholy ground. They can't mix, there's a space, like magnets that repel each other. It's a rule." Sam's mind immediately goes to work on that while Bobby mutters.

"What about unstained earth, is that a generalization or what?"

"If you don't quit asking me six questions at once, I'm gonna hang up on your ass, Sam Winchester."

"Sorry, Bobby," Sam says, but he eyes the sun. They may have an hour and a half before dusk. Maybe not that long. "We're running out of time."

Bobby is quiet for a moment. "If it gets bad, if you can't get to it, you do just what yer Daddy did, Sam. You knock him down and drag him out of it."

"That's the plan," Sam agrees, because it has been exactly the plan from the instant Sam had comprehended what could be at stake. That's assuming, of course, that Sam isn't right there beside Dean, itching to get his hands on whatever it is.

"I got a lot of demon summoning stuff on Lilith, but no moon summoning. I ain't exactly a witch, here. But," Bobby says, and pauses. "But every bit of Lilith demon summoning lore involves babies or kids. So."

"Shit," Sam says, his temples pounding.

"Yeah," Bobby agrees. "And. Unstained earth. Shit, boys. Unstained earth is the grave of a stillborn child, one that never took breath, so is exempt from original sin. A blank soul."

"Bobby," Sam says, horrified and shaking, but still grateful as hell. "Bobby, you don't know how much that helps. Seriously, if we don't die, it's because of you."

"Well, don't die!" Bobby half-yells. "Or I'll kick your asses all over the afterlife." 

"Yeah, Bobby," Sam says, with a laugh that doesn't sound very convincing, even to his own ears. "Yeah."

Dean is scrolling furiously through the information on Lilith the moon Sam had been looking through when Sam gets back into the library. Sam drags the notebook over and laboriously translates Dean's handwriting to English. If there's a ritual to make hollowed ground, and it does actually involve hollowing out the earth, and if it has to be straddling the line between holy and unholy ground, and if it has to be on the gravesite of a stillborn child, and it has to be outside, someplace directly under the night sky, where Lilith's light can touch it, they might have a chance. There might be a chance.

Sam conveys this to Dean in whispers, and Dean says, "Burial records, I'm on it."

"I'll cover the city planning office for holy ground, meet at the car in no more than an hour," Sam says. It won't actually list 'holy ground' anyplace, but it'll give Sam sites of churches and graveyards. It'll have to do.

"You got a plan?" Dean asks, brows arched.

Sam manages something that is close to a smile. "If we can't find anything useful, we'll go find the black dog from Chris' vision, and head in that direction."

"That is a shitty, shitty plan," Dean says.

"Do better," Sam says, and heads toward city hall, already knowing that they won't have time to get enough information, but still having to try.

***

Sam doesn't even bother with a fake ID or a cover story. He asks the first person he sees that looks like she works there if she can tell him where he can find the flimsies, and she gives him directions. Sam walks right up to the door and goes right in. There's a guy inside, who looks up in surprise when Sam comes in, but just says, "I'm almost done with this set, do you need this table?"

"No, I can manage. You know where the church and cemetery zones are stashed?"

"Yeah, yeah," the guy says, waving a hand to the left. "In the corner there, top of the row."

The cubbies are neatly labeled, which is helpful. Sam could get three times as much information in half the time via computer, but he doesn't have time to track one down that he can access without it being obvious, and he doesn't know what kind of security he'd be dealing with even if he did. He spreads churches out across a corkboard and pins it in place, and spends fifteen minutes working it over, first with an eye for detail, and then just in that lazy, half-focused way that sometimes works to make something jump out at him.

The other guy leaves, and Sam spreads graveyards out on the table he'd been using and repeats the process. When he gets nothing, he spreads one atop the other, and looks for where they intersect.

Once upon a time, all cemeteries had been conscientiously built on consecrated ground. In some places, smaller places, that's often still true. But in a place like Rawlins, it's harder to be sure. It's small enough that it's possible, but just big enough that it's nowhere near a certainty. Any one of these, the new ones, may or may not be blessed. There's no way to tell, so Sam concentrates his attention on the older, smaller cemeteries, especially ones laid out next to or nearby churches, and there are half a dozen, too many to make any kind of real guess, too spread out to even try to hit them all.

Sam lists them all down anyway, with directions, because what else is he going to do.

Then, on a whim, he pulls down road maps for the north eastern part of the city, and tracks the interstate back. He doesn't know the exact city limits of Rawlins, the road Chris had mentioned had been almost eight miles out. He might not be able to find it here. It might be county maps he needs.

But he does find it. He thinks. He's pretty sure.

It's Cross Creek Road, and it meanders off the edge of the map, but it's going the right direction, just a tiny squiggle denoting its unimportance, but there's nothing anywhere around it. It's zoned as ranch land.

And he's out of time.

He heads back to the car, and dials information and gets the local sheriff's office as he's walking. The clerk or dispatcher that answers knows exactly where the old cemetery off of Cross Creek is, but it hasn't been used in decades, she tells him, maybe longer. She only knows it because kids hang out there sometimes, make a mess of the place. But she's perfectly willing to give Sam directions when he explains about his grandmother, and how he's been to every cemetery in Rawlins, and Cross Creek is his last stop.

"Wait 'til mornin', though, sweetie," she tells him. "There's no light to speak of, that far out, and nobody maintains it anymore. It's not even right at the road, you have to hoof it from behind the old church. You could step in a hole and break your leg."

"I will," he lies. "And what was the name of it, again?"

She pauses at this, and finally says. "There used to be a little town out that way, more a wide place in the road name of Serendipity. I don't know that I ever heard it called that, but that's my best guess. Serendipity Cemetery."

"Hey, oh," Sam says, appalled at that possible choice of names. "Thanks so much, you've been so sweet."

Sam gets to the Impala, and Dean has a stack of files nearly up to his chin. "Really?" Sam asks. "You stole them?"

"I got through about forty before I ran outta time," Dean says grumpily. "I took what I didn't get through. We can put 'em back in the morning if we're not dead."

"I wish you'd quit saying that," Sam says tiredly, and he does, he really really does. He gets in on the passenger side without discussion, and Dean hands him the files and a notepad almost-neatly listing stillborn deaths and the cemeteries they're buried in. Sam scans it while Dean gets in behind the wheel and starts the car.

"Did you get anything?" Dean asks. "Where'm I goin', Sam?"

"Cross Creek Road," Sam says, and sighs. "It could be nothing, but. I think it's the road from Chris' vision, and there is at least one old cemetery out there. And if that isn't it, we can still try and find the black dog."

"There's nothing in any of them records that say whether or not the baby ever took a breath," Dean tells him. "I hadta pull all the stillborn records, and the list is the oldest stuff. Some of those records were so old they was almost falling apart. And you know they won't do us a damned bit of good if the grave is old enough that the baby was born at home and they just buried it and went on with their lives. Could be that way for anything eighty years back or more."

Sam is aware of that, but he says, "Mmhmm," anyway, because Dean hates it when he's talking and Sam isn't listening. It's a frustrating character paradox. "Serenity Hill Cemetery," Sam says about halfway through the list. He circles it.

"That it?" Dean asks.

"Don't know," Sam says. "The clerk at the county office knew the cemetery I was talking about, but it's old. She wasn't sure of the name. She thought it might be Serendipity Cemetery, but this sounds a little like it, and it's not any of the ones I found in Rawlins."

Dean finds the turnoff onto Cross Creek Road. It is, as Chris had mentioned, unmarked. He turns them down it; they're headed mostly north, and the sun is sinking on the horizon beyond Dean's window. Dean looks grimly unhappy, and Sam can see lines of strain around his mouth and eyes. He thinks about how it must of been for Dean, to be so fundamentally out of control of himself, of his mind, and has to make himself go back to looking at records without trying to say something comforting.

"This could be nothing," Dean says, as Sam flips open folders and scans their contents. "This could be nothing at all."

Sam can tell Dean doesn't believe it.

"If you feel anything, you tell me the second it happens," Sam says. "The very second, Dean."

"Yeah, Sammy," Dean says, and drives.

Sam is down to the last ten folders when Dean brakes hard, the back end of the car fishtailing a little at the abrupt stop. Sam looks up and right into the eyes of a black dog. Sam has seen them before, twice, but this one is different. This one is huge. Chris' is right. With the size of it, it could very well be a small carnivorous horse. Its mouth is open, tongue lolling, and its teeth look like small daggers. There is something not right with its eyes, too, but it takes Sam a minute to figure out what it is. Then he remembers Chris' e-mail: You see it, it sees you, and yeah. That's it. It's looking at Sam and Dean, not at the Impala, like the headlights don't blind it, like it knows them. It cocks it's head, mouth stretched into a doggy grin, and then it's gone.

Vanished, not run off. Just not there anymore.

"Well," Dean says after a long moment. "We ain't gonna be following that."

Full dark settles over them like a cloak.

"But we know what direction it was pointed in," Sam says. He flips on a flashlight and scans the rest of the files. There's nothing there that Sam can use. If they had more time, there's a lot the two of them could do, could find out. If they had more time, this wouldn't be that different than an ordinary hunt. They could talk to people, they could canvas places in the daylight, they could find the grave, even if they had to walk every cemetery in Rawlins to find the line where holy ground crosses into unholy ground, they could look up old articles and police reports for anything that could be even passingly related to black magic, the occult, _something_.

They are flying blind here, working on nothing but a cryptic jumble of doggerel from Dad and a whole lot of 'maybe it's' and 'it could be' and 'it's possible' and Sam _hates_ that shit. He hates it less if there's lore, or even if they've got several possibilities, but this is like wading into black water when you _know_ there's something down there that wants to kill you, but you don't know exactly what, or exactly how, and you have no idea how to kill it, let alone save yourself.

He hates that it's Dean who could turn evil, and he gets it, he gets _exactly_ why Dean would never, could never, make Sam that promise. If it happens, Sam will fix it. He'll find a way. There is no other option.

Sam has been afraid. They fight monsters and demons, their lives are fragile, they live balanced on the edge of death every day, but he is terrified now. He can't lose Dean. He can't.

"I think you should stay with the car," Sam says hollowly. He knows it won't work, but he says it anyway.

"I ain't leaving you alone," Dean says, a simple statement of fact, no anger behind it. Sam looks at him, and Dean is wearing the expression that Sam loves the best, the one that is calm and certain and competent.

"Okay," Sam says. "Okay."

He gets out of the car and hears Dean doing the same. Dean pops the trunk, and in the absence of any real information, they load for bear. Dean pauses, his hand hovering, and then picks up a short, vicious machete, and calmly says, "What's the Norse word for 'bless'?"

Sam wracks his brain for it for a few seconds. "Blót," he finally comes up with, and then grabs Dean's wrist. "No, you want the verb here, the invocation. Blóta."

Dean just nods and draws the blade down his marked hand and murmurs: "Blóta."

Sam's marked hand twitches as though briefly electrified, and he grabs his own machete and whispers his own blessing.

Then they take the time to bless everything else sharp that they're carrying.

"They look like people, Sam," Dean says, looking Sam in the face. "If they're there, they look like people, but they ain't. Not anymore. Aim to kill. Promise me."

"I promise," Sam whispers, and he knows he will. Even if they _were_ people, to save Dean, he will, God help him.

"Okay," Dean says. "In the car, or on foot from here?"

"The car," Sam says. "There was a little town here, a wide place in the road, she said, an old church. I think we'll see it, even if there's not much left of it." Then he adds, "Let me drive."

Dean doesn't argue. "At least it ain't that close to town," Dean murmurs. "If it calls, it'll take some time for anyone to get to it."

_Unless they drive, unless there are houses out here, unless there are campers, unless..._ Sam thinks, but doesn't say. There's no point in it.


	15. 15

The wide place in the road turns out to be a church so old and decrepit that not only is it falling in on itself, but there are bits of its structure littering the ground around it, as though it's shedding it's sanctity piece by piece.

"Here," Dean says. "I feel it. It's magic. It's witchcraft."

And that's something, at least. "Is it, do you...?"

"No," Dean says, and then, "yeah, but. I can think. I feel it, I know where to go, I feel... _drawn_ , but not like I _have_ to go. It's different." Dean shrugs, and then gets out of the car. Sam does the same. He doesn't think Dean is lying to him, but it wouldn't be unlike Dean to understate something like this. Dean hates to be weak, but he hates to be a burden more.

It isn't until they set foot on the ground outside the church that Sam gets some idea of why it may be different for Dean this time.

There is a blue-white glow at the edge of his vision, and when Sam looks down, it's the bracelet. He throws a glance at Dean and sees that Dean's is doing the same. Protection magic. Strength magic. Clarity of mind magic.

"Okay, totally worth it," Dean says with a tiny grin.

"The church is unholy ground," Sam says, which isn't really necessary, considering. "Someone unconsecrated it."

"Maybe it was never holy to begin with," Dean says, which Sam finds kind of horrifying, but could be right anyway. "It's not the church. It's further back, anyway."

"But there could be an altar, a power source," Sam says. "We should check."

Dean turns to look at him. The light from Dean's bracelet shines in his eyes. "It's a decoy," he says. Sam opens his mouth. "I know," Dean says, and Sam shuts his mouth. Dean looks at him for another moment, and then he rolls his eyes, his face scrunching into a long-suffering look that is so quintessentially _Dean_ that Sam instantly feels a tiny bit better about the whole situation, and then opens the trunk and pulls out a gas can. Sam watches him splash the front facade of the not-a-church and set it alight. It goes up like a matchbook.

"Come on," Dean says, and drops the gas can. He pauses to slam the Impala's trunk shut, and then stops as though frozen. He reaches in, shoves something out of the way, and comes out with a shovel. Sam stares at it, confounded. "I have a hunch," Dean says. " _Hollowed_ ground." Sam finds himself totally neutral on the matter, which is a rarity. He has no idea if that might work, and no idea if it might not. Worth a shot, he guesses. Dean turns toward the north and starts walking. Sam follows.

Dean is walking like a man on a mission, and Sam knows what that mission is. This thing, it had hurt Dean, once. It had scared him, had made him _less_ Dean, and that's something Dean simply won't stand for.

 

***

By the time Sam starts to feel it, too, they've walked at least a mile. Dean is blank-faced, but carefully walking right beside Sam, something that they were both trained isn't strategically sound, but Sam doesn't say anything. Dean has been inching closer to him the whole way, and if being close is helping him somehow, Sam won't say a word about it.

It feels slick to Sam, oily and unpleasant. It doesn't draw him at all. It doesn't exactly repel him, either, he doesn't feel any need to flee. It just feels dangerous, he wants to avoid it like he wants to avoid crossing the interstate on foot, because it's just stupid to do that. It's just stupid to go near whatever that thing is. He can't imagine what it must feel like to actually want to, and his stomach rolls a little at the idea that Dean is somehow drawn to such a sick place.

"Okay?" Sam murmurs. Their bracelets are glowing like tiny stars.

"It's not my favorite," is all Dean says.

They see someone else for the first time about three minutes after that. It's a woman in a housecoat. She has a child of four or five by the hand and is dragging him along behind her, though he is crying desperately, brokenly.

Dean smacks her in the back of the head with the shovel without warning.

The kid crumples to the ground next to the woman, who is presumably his mother, still sobbing. Dean gets down on one knee beside them, and Sam doesn't let himself watch. He watches around them, instead, it's his job to keep them safe while Dean is otherwise occupied.

"Hey, hey, it's okay. What's your name, kiddo?" Dean's voice is low and easy, but Sam doubts that's going to work. Dean whacked the kid's mom with a shovel. "Hey, I need you to help me out, here," Dean says. "You know there's a bad place, you know that, right?"

The kid doesn't stop crying, but he manages to make a sound in the affirmative.

"Okay, I had to stop your mom from going there, I had to do it to save her, and to save you, you understand?" Sam guesses the kid nods, because Dean goes on. "You might see other people going there. I'm gonna pick up your mom and you gotta come with me. We're gonna hide you where nobody can make you go, and when your mom wakes up, she won't want to go anymore, okay? Everything'll be okay again by the time she wakes up."

"Okay," the kid manages, watery-voiced, and Sam keeps pace with Dean, carrying the unconscious woman, until Dean finds a dense thicket to tuck her into. The kid crawls in afterward, and Dean arranges some whippy branches around to conceal as much as he can.

"We're gonna fix it," Dean tells the kid, steely-calm. "We're gonna make it go away."

Sam is deeply uneasy about leaving them there, and he guesses Dean is, too, but there's nothing else to do. Taking them closer would only be more dangerous.

"Can you feel it?" Dean asks two or three minutes later.

"Yes," Sam says, and can't quite keep the disgust out of his tone.

"I wish I knew why the hell it works on me," Dean says bitterly.

Dean shovel-bashes three more people unconscious and they leave them where they lay. Either they'll wake up tomorrow with resounding headaches, or something will kill them, but there's no time to do anything else. Sam is starting to be able to hear it now, too, a high, buzzing whine, like a hoard of unfriendly insects.

Dean keeps tipping his head back as if to scent at the air, and Sam wonders if he's smelling the magic, if _that's_ why it works on Dean, but he doesn't try to think about it now.

Five minutes later, they pass the first person moving in the other direction. It's a young man, twenty maybe, with short, dark hair and he smiles when he sees them coming. It's so disarming that when he darts toward Sam, something long and dark clutched in his hand, Sam almost doesn't dodge back in time to evade the tree branch he's swinging. The guy lunges for Sam again, ignoring Dean entirely, and Sam does what his body knows to do, he throws himself to the side, out of Dean's way, and Dean's gun roars in the dark, and the guy's head just disintegrates.

Sam staggers back, staring, actually feeling like he might throw up. They've killed, but they kill monsters. They've killed a handful of possessed bodies, but even then. It wasn't like this.

Dean's hand closes around his shoulder. The look he gives Sam is profoundly discerning. "Not now. Not now."

Sam nods, because yes, and they go on.

Dean knocks four more people unconscious.

"It's not far," Dean says, unnecessarily, because Sam can tell, it feels like black walls pressing against his mind, but Dean is panting and pale. "I'm," Dean says, "Sam," and then Dean is shoving Sam hard in the middle of his chest. Sam goes sprawling on his back at the unexpectedness of it, but when Dean steps over his legs, he still has the presence of mind to shove his own legs up between them, and Dean goes down, too. Sam grabs him pretty easily. Dean is fighting him, but he's ineffective and clumsy, all his training absent, all his focus on whatever is drawing him. Sam drags him back fifteen feet, twenty, and Dean goes limp on his back, gasping up at the sky. "I don't think, Sam. I. I can feel it like hooks in my head. I."

Sam takes the shovel out of Dean's hand and knocks a high school football player unconscious, almost without thinking about it at all. His mind is thoroughly occupied with Dean, with what he's going to do with him, how to convince Dean to stay behind, how to keep him safe.

Dean is sitting up when Sam turns back to him, his brows drawn down into a deep frown. "You've got to let me do this, Dean," Sam says, and is unsurprised when Dean shakes his head.

A knot of anger and fear heats Sam's chest.

"I ain't leaving you," Dean says, and staggers up to his feet; he looks dazed. "I keep you safe. I keep you safe." 

It's phrased so oddly that Sam hangs up on it for a second, on the way Dean sounds when he says it, like it's a simple truth, a reality, indisputable, and a statement of intent at the same time. Like that is what Dean is for. He is to keep Sam safe, and he is content to be that.

"Dean," Sam says, chest aching. "You can't. You can't this time," and he's going to knock Dean out with the fucking shovel. He becomes aware of his intention only a second before he swings, and he's entirely shocked that Dean doesn't just let him, as dazed as he seems, that Dean doesn't just take the shovel to the head and go down like a ton of bricks.

Instead, Dean catches the shaft in one hand, and Sam tries to jerk it back, and Dean staggers forward, one hand closing around Sam's biceps, and then they both stand still as the tight heat in Sam's chest, not emotion at all, not emotion, magic, Sam is ridiculous, _of course_ it is, this is what it was _meant_ for, goes hot and out, and Sam drops the shovel and grabs Dean's hand, the one he had cut, the one they had bound themselves together with, and pulls it under his shirt, against the spell. There's a brief burst of pain, and then a deep itch someplace under Sam's skin. He knows he's bleeding again, but the pain is gone almost immediately, and Dean is entirely back in his eyes, in his face.

"Oh," Dean says, wide eyed. "Oh, now I feel really fucking stupid."

Sam laughs, helpless to stop it. Dean grins, but it's brief.

"We gotta go, Sammy. We gotta move. It's getting worse."

Sam can feel that, too, though far more distantly now, like his ears are ringing faintly. He tosses the shovel back to Dean, who catches it almost absently, and they start moving again.

It isn't until they possibly concuss another three people moving toward the corruptor and kill another coming away from it that Sam realizes that he, they, are effectively superhuman right now. That they are infused with a power normally beyond them, and he doesn't know how long that will last.

"Time," Dean says, like he's reading Sam's mind. Hell, maybe he is.

"Run?" Sam suggests, and they do, pausing only to keep as many people as they see from actually reaching their goal.

It's almost a surprise when they reach it, but that may only be because they've been ducking and weaving through what is essentially a small woodland area, not quite a forest, but full of slender trees and dense underbrush, and then they are abruptly in a cemetery. It's old, probably a hundred years old. Sam can feel the age under his boots, can feel the consecrated earth, and once they are there, the thing, the corruptor -- their father had named it aptly, Sam decides -- is at the far edge, an expanse wreathed in a pale, writhing haze that looks like fog, he sees why Dad thought so, but is something else. Something ugly and fetidly yellow, sulfur maybe. Sam can hear the rush of water, but he knows that isn't water, too. It's whatever power is pulling people in. It's the sound of people being drawn.

There are at least fifteen people between them and the thing, and there is a slice of darkness, like a beam of sunlight in reverse, a black spotlight that is impenetrable to Sam's eyes, but is what they have to kill or destroy or disable. That's the thing.

"I can't get that close," Dean says, and Sam looks at him. Dean's gaze is still clear, but his eyes keep tipping back to that darkness. "I'll come close, but you're going to hafta do what needs doin', Sam, I can't go into the black or it won't be me that comes out again. I'll cover you. I'll keep you safe."

Dean hands him the shovel, which Sam has still has no idea will be of any use at all, and pulls out a pair of pistols. "Stay down as far as you can, duck and weave, baby brother."

And that's it. That's the pep talk. They wade in.

There is a range on it, they discover almost immediately. Whatever is boosting their strength, keeping them clear-headed, it has a range, and as soon as Sam feels himself falling back into the dark Dean is moving in closer, pushing the buzzing horror of the corruptor out from under Sam's skin. It's about twenty feet, it should be enough, it should be, has to be.

Sam has a shovel in one hand and his gun in the other, and they would make a terrible action-horror movie, Sam is sure, because for all his training, all Sam is doing is shooting anything that is directly in his path and smacking the falling bodies out of the way with the shovel, counting on Dean to handle anything more complicated. He can hear Dean firing as well, and then he's close enough to hear chanting, to recognize it for what it is, and there is definitely some _one_ in that beam of... of negative space, of course, someone who is causing this, and that's who Sam is here for. Not to destroy a thing, or not only that, but to eliminate the creator of this obscenity.

Hallowed ground, hollowed ground, Sam feels the difference when he crosses onto it. Neither good nor evil, but not just ground, either. Ground scraped clean to bone, made blank, unable to reject whatever unnatural thing is planted in its soil.

Sam's gun clicks empty, and he swings the shovel two-handed at a pretty teenaged girl, caving in her skull like a pinata. He steps over her and pulls out his machete.

And the shovel is going to do them no good, he understands. Once it's been hollowed, it can't be filled in. It has to be un-hollowed. It has to be made full of something more than dirt.

Sam has no idea what, but maybe that doesn't matter yet. Maybe it's something that can be done after.

And there is no choice to it, he is going to have to step into that blackness. Even as he thinks it, an older man in a three piece suit steps out of it, smiles at Sam, and points a tiny derringer at him. He falls back with a hole in the side of his head, and Dean, three feet or so behind Sam, says, "I'll hurt you if I go into the dark." Dean sounds agonized at it.

"Just keep anyone else from coming in behind me," Sam says. "I've got this." Which he may not, not at _all_ , but Dean needs to hear it.

But he takes a deep breath. Sam hates fighting in the dark.

But it isn't dark when he steps inside. There is an edge of dark, a barrier of it, but inside he can see clearly, and he can hear the high, wailing buzz again, right on top of him and almost unbearable, but Sam doesn't have time to consider it. There are two people leaving the dark, a man with a high and tight and a woman with a hairnet. They both come at him, and Sam deals with the woman easily, just cuts her down, but the man is another matter. He's on Sam before he can bring the big blade around, one hand around Sam's wrist to hold it at bay, and Sam briefly sees a USMC tattooed inside the guy's forearm.

_Great_ , Sam thinks, and barely keeps his feet as the guy tries to sweep them out from under him, and only then does Sam realize he's still holding the shovel. He whacks the guy in the side of the head with it and wrenches his machete-hand free. Sam whacks him again with the shovel, and the guy goes to one knee, and Sam's overhand slice with the machete almost beheads him. Blood spatters up so high it hits Sam in the face, and Sam will allow himself to throw up for a year, later, and wrenches the blade of the machete out of the guy's body.

The chanting is a ring of thirteen, and Sam is jolted unpleasantly at the odds before he realizes that they aren't doing anything. They don't even notice him there, apparently. They're all on their knees, bleeding from gashes across their chests, leaning forward so their blood hits the ground, and are chanting with complete oblivion. In the center of the ring, there is an open, ragged wound in the earth, and the terrible sound pressing at Sam's ears and mind is coming from there.

Sam doesn't dare cross their circle. It's elaborate and he's never seen anything like it, and if it's containing something he has absolutely no desire to break it, but he sidles as close as he can, close enough to touch either of the chanters closest to him, and leans over to see.

It's a baby. No. It's the body of a baby, a tiny, shriveled corpse, unmoving, but it's still wailing helplessly, it's cries piercingly painful, and there is something down there with it. Something black and roiling, a demon without form, which shouldn't be possible, which is not allowed, and Sam can't tell what it's doing, but he knows it's doing something. It's hurting the baby, Sam can see something pale and soft stretched between the corpse and the blackness. 

"Untouched by original sin," Sam says, unaware until he says it that he's doing it out loud. "A blank soul."

A soul with nowhere to go. Not a vengeful spirit, never even a person, never even alive to leave a spirit behind, just an abandoned soul, a soul with no path.

God, oh God, it may be the worst thing Sam can even think of, and he's furious for an instant, furious that it should ever be allowed, that there are no reapers for these forgotten bits of potential, no angels that come for them on behalf of the divinity that claims to shelter both sinners and saints. 

"Maybe it doesn't even know," Sam says aloud, again, and feels no shame at his tears. He hopes that's true. He hopes.

It doesn't matter now, though. Now, whether this potential person is or ever was aware enough to know it _was_ , it is in agony. It's the means, Sam doesn't know how, but he's still sure. Without the blank soul resting in it's original grave, this thing can't be done.

And Sam knows the way to release a soul from a body. He doesn't know what will happen to it when he does, but he doesn't know what else to do, either.

There is only this option.

He has salt in both jacket pockets, and a Zippo in his jeans.

The demon doesn't even seem to notice as Sam scatters salt across the tiny remains, and Sam doesn't have any accelerant, but the body is so small and dry, he hopes he won't need it. He lights the Zippo and tosses it down. It sputters there, still lit but the flame tiny, and then spreads so quickly, doesn't just spread it billows like a cloud, that Sam has to lean back against the heat of it, but he feels it when the soul tears free. He hears the immediate quiet of its crying, and the dark barrier around the area flickers like a light and disperses.

The disembodied demon makes a sound like a grating roar, but it's contained. It boils out of the open grave and writhes and roils blackly, but it's trapped.

Dean is abruptly there, his hand on Sam's arm, and Sam says, "Don't kill them. It's somehow walking the world unbodied, and I have to get rid of it, but for now they're holding it. I don't know if it can get loose if they stop what they're doing."

It immediately becomes moot, and Dean shouts and falls half-against Sam, and Sam turns just in time to avoid being smacked in the head with their own shovel by a twelve or thirteen year old girl. This one, though, this time, it is a demon. It's eyes are tar black and ancient with evil.

"You boys just fucked up big," she says, and Sam doesn't think, just swings, and her head flies off her shoulders and flips through the air. Her body falls, neck pumping blood, and Sam sees too late that that was what it wanted as her blood flows across the circle and breaks the lines. There is a sharp crack, like a single piece of thick glass broken precisely into two pieces, and all thirteen of the chanters go silent and still.

"Run," Sam says, and he's certain.

Dean is still leaning on him, stunned, blood on his face, and Sam grabs him by one arm and jerks him into a run, drags him along behind him. "Sam?" Dean pants.

"It will kill the coven first, then it will come after us," Sam shouts. "You _run_ , Dean!" And it's abruptly a lot easier to pull Dean along when Dean is fleeing imminent death and knows it.

"How do we get rid of it?" Dean yells.

"I don't _know_ ," Sam yells back. "It shouldn't be possible at all!"

The silence behind them is ominous, Sam had expected at least some screaming from the black coven, but he puts all his attention toward getting them away until Dean says, "Can it even cross, can it...?"

Which is a really good question, because it's possible they're about to flee the only place within miles that might actually be of some protection to them.

Sam doesn't stop, but turns, and it's _right there_ , it's shooting out ashy tendrils of itself in Dean's direction, and something cracks hotly in the middle of Sam's brain. "Dean!" he screams, and jerks Dean both forward and toward the ground. Dean goes down like he's made of sticks, with far more force than Sam should have been able to exert, and Sam throws out both hands and he _pushes_ , he uses it deliberately for the first time ever. He puts all he has behind it, and it's enough to drive him to his knees, half-straddling Dean, but it's also enough to keep it back, keep it off of them. Sam can _see_ the way the demon hits Sam's power and spreads wide, three feet away. It's pushing back, and it probably knows far more about using it's evil powers than Sam knows about using his, but Sam screams with effort and holds it back.

Dean is doing something beneath Sam, can feel him moving, and then Gatorade squirt bottles of holy water are landing in front of Sam, and they will only delay the inevitable, but they're better than nothing. Sam can live with going down fighting, if that's what it takes. Sam doesn't think an exorcism will work either, not when it is already doing the impossible by walking the earth with no body, but he starts grating one out between clenched teeth anyway, because it can't fucking hurt.

Then it's gone.

The sudden lack of resistance flings Sam forward, and he would've landed right on his face in grave dirt except Dean catches him by the back of his jacket and holds him up. Then he's up on his knees behind Sam, both arms wrapped around his chest. "Sam, Sammy, say somethin', Sam, Christo!"

"I'm not possessed," Sam wheezes. Dean is squashing the wind out of him, and what with all the running and killing and telekinesis, Sam didn't have much wind to begin with. He is searching frantically for the demon, or for a person, someone it might have possessed, for something, but he's finding nothing but corpses, oh God, a lot of corpses.

"Is it...?" Dean asks. "Did you...?" And then he makes a soft, pained sound and his arms loosen around Sam's chest. Sam's legs suddenly feel like they're made of mud, and he finds himself sitting on his ass on a grave. He is tired, he is fucking exhausted, his head is pounding and he's not sure he can lift his arms, and bizarrely, that's what makes him sure they're safe.

"It's gone. It has to be," he says, and leans back against Dean, who leans forward against Sam, so they brace each other up. "The spell, the strength, I can't feel that the ground is consecrated anymore. If we were still in danger, it would still be working."

"Where the fuck did it go?" Dean asks, bewildered and panting. He drops his head forward onto Sam's shoulder as though he's too tired to hold it up. "What the fuck?" he mumbles.

Sam doesn't know. If the coven was containing it, it's likely that they summoned it to begin with, but Sam has no fucking idea how they'd managed to summon an unbodied demon. Demons on this plane have to be embodied in some way. It's a fundamental rule. Theoretically, it could have been summoned into the corpse in the grave, but it hadn't been. They had very definitely been separate. Sam has only ever seen demons with his actual eyes when he's cast them out of people, and even then, he can't be sure that form is reality, or just what his mind is capable of seeing. Maybe it has to do with Lilith, maybe...

"'Lilith's arc braces the threshold.'" he says. "'True sight is overmade, the dark solid under her wings.'"

"So when the circle was broken, it broke out," Dean says. "But those guys stopped chanting, too."

"And the chant was probably what was keeping Lilith in the sky," Sam agrees.

"And it didn't disappear all at once because there's always a little nowhen time at moonrise and moonset, sunrise and sunset, when you can see it coming or goin', but it's in between." Dean tightens his arms around Sam again briefly. "You did good, Sammy," he murmurs.

Sam sees a man in a track suit fifteen feet away with half his chest in shreds, the earth around him black with blood.

Sam turns toward Dean, his whole body obeying his commands haltingly, his muscles beset with tremors. Dean turns, too, and Sam retains just enough presence of mind to keep Dean facing away from the guy in the track suit before they crash against one another's chests, their arms slung around each other. Sam tucks Dean's face into his neck, he doesn't want Dean to see the carnage they have wrought, and tips his own forehead against Dean's shoulder so Sam doesn't have to see it either.

The night is silent and still, and they are going to have to do something about the bodies, something about the hollowed ground, something about the people they'd beaten unconscious and left lying, but right now they aren't dead, they are both alive and themselves, and that's enough.

The rest of it can wait.


	16. 16

Somehow, Sam falls into an exhausted, fitful doze. He isn't sure how long, but the moon, the real moon, is high in the sky by the time he starts fully awake. He looks at Dean, who looks back with weary awareness.

"All these bodies gotta be salted and burned," Dean says. His tone is matter of fact, his face carefully blank. "I don't know what soul was left to 'em, but we can't let 'em lay. If they haunt, it could be bad."

Sam nods, too exhausted to argue, especially when Dean is right.

But they tend to the living, first.

They only find a couple of them. Sam thinks they woke up and just headed back to wherever they came from, probably having no real idea why they were where they were to begin with.

They find the high school kid that Sam had knocked out, wandering and dazed. He's bleeding from one temple, and clearly has a concussion. They find the mom and her son, still tucked into the thicket where Dean had left them. The woman is awake now, and clearly in some pain, but the set of her face says she knows something happened, even if she isn't clear on what.

"Jimmy says," she starts, and then stops. She doesn't seem to know what to say, and Sam doesn't want to hear it anyway.

"Go home," he tells her. "Take your son home."

Dean pushes the football player toward her. "Take him with you. He needs a doctor."

She takes the football player's hand in one of hers, and her son's in the other.

"I don't remember," she says.

"You don't want to," Dean tells her grimly. "Don't try. Just take them and leave. Never come back here."

She looks at Dean, and then at Sam. "You're covered in blood," she tells them.

Dean opens his mouth, probably to say it's not theirs, but Sam takes his wrist. "We're hurt," Sam says. "But we'll be okay. Forget about it. Forget about us."

She nods slowly, and turns to the southeast and starts walking. 

Jimmy looks back over his shoulder at them as his mom leads him away. His eyes are huge and bruised looking, but he gives them a small smile.

He's the only person, Sam realizes, that has some actual idea of what Sam and Dean had done. Not the details, God, no, that would be awful, but he knows he was saved. He knows he and his mother were saved.

Something comes to rest at the back of Sam's brain. Some flapping, clawing horror that he hadn't known was there. It will never leave entirely, he knows from long experience with horrible things, but it settles into stillness, into something Sam can learn to live with, in time.

They dig a trench for the bodies. It takes them well into the morning. A few of them are in the woods, and have to be dragged onto consecrated ground.

Dean goes back to the car for more salt and gasoline.

Sam investigates the coven. They're all dead, as expected. Their eyes are empty hollows in their faces, their bodies flayed to ribbons. Sam is grateful to find that he feels nothing but satisfaction in their deaths. He hadn't killed them. They had killed themselves.

He digs a separate pit for them, his arms as heavy as stones, but he won't bury them with the people whose souls they had mutilated somehow. He does dig it in consecrated ground, though. He can't be sure what might result in burying them in unholy earth, and he won't risk it. He uses his phone to take pictures of their faces. There's nothing on any of them identifying, and he and Dean will have to track them down, find their book of shadows, destroy everything about the particulars of this ritual. Do all they can to be sure it can never be done again.

Sam doesn't know if he will even explain it to Bobby, if he will ever set words to paper, immortalizing even the tiny slice of knowledge that he does possess. Once that knowledge is made solid outside his head, Sam has no control over what might be done with it. Some things should not be known. It's dangerous to hold this a secret, but it may be more dangerous not to.

There are twenty-four bodies, not counting the coven. Twenty-four people. Sam understands that he and Dean were fighting for their lives, and for the lives of maybe hundreds of others. He understands that what came out of the not-light of whatever spell the black coven had been weaving were not people anymore. But they looked like people, bled like people, died like people do. All their malevolence had been inside, invisible, and not a thing he knew how to expunge, like those possessed by demons. He understands that they had done the only thing they could have. He knows that he and Dean are not, now, mass-murderers.

But he is still sick with it, he feels hollow with guilt and grief.

Dean's face is lined and grim when he gets back. He looks at the bodies laid out like dolls, side by side, and his face goes even starker, his body pulled in tight, but they salt them down and light it in three places, and they watch until every body is burning.

The coven is quicker, almost cursory.

They still don't know what to do about the hollowed ground. The remains inside are ash, but Sam walks around it, obliterating the complicated containment circle without letting himself look at it enough to remember any of the details.

Sam will research it. They can find out how, someone will know, or some book. Or maybe even Edward's coven. Pagans deal in the natural world, they might know a way to cleanse it. 

In the meantime, all Sam can do is fill it in and mark it so he can find it again and then douse the whole thing with holy water. He doesn't think that will un-hollow the earth, but it might work as a barrier, at least for a while.

It's afternoon by the time they've filled up both mass graves. If anyone comes here, it won't hide anything, but that's not what they're trying to do, Sam understands. They aren't hiding it. They are putting this place to rights, as well as they can. As much as they are capable of.

They are filthy and exhausted when they get back to the Impala, but just touching it, putting his hand on the handle of the passenger side, a long familiar thing repeated so often that it is, in itself, a kind of ritual in Sam's mind, shifts some of the weight off of him. It seems to do the same for Dean. He sits behind the wheel for a long moment, his hands wrapped around it. They are caked with dirt and blood, his ring invisible for once. Then he starts the engine and pulls away from the church, which is now just a cracked and smoking cellar hole with bits of charred wood poking out like bones, and onto Cross Creek Road going north.

They drive forty-one miles before Sam sees something off the road, far enough back to be almost invisible, and he gestures briefly. Dean slows and drives another three quarters of a mile before they see the rutted, overgrown dirt track. The Impala's suspension is not happy about this turn of events, but the complaining sound of it is familiar, too.

The barn is falling a little down, but is structurally sound enough that Dean is willing to pull the car right inside. It's been unused long enough that there is almost no trace of animal smell, no scent of hay. The doors on one end are locked tight by an ancient, corroded chain, and the doors on the other can be wedged shut with a well placed crowbar. There is a hole in the roof the size of the Impala itself, but it's on the far end, and they aren't looking for The Hilton, just a place to be safe until they've slept.

They have slept in the car before. Probably two or three hundred times.

But they drag musty, disused sleeping bags from where they are wedged at the very back of the top part of the trunk, and they make a nest as far away from the working door as possible, with the car between them and it.

Dean makes them a devil's trap the size of a small room, using a bit of broken board to dig it into the earth, and then lining it with salt. It's like the crowbar in the door. It is of some use, but if something really determined comes for them, it won't be that hard to get past.

But it's what they have.

Sam uses wet wipes to get the blood and dirt and smoke off of Dean's face, and Dean does the same for Sam, and then they huddle together in their nest of sleeping bags, foreheads tipped together, bloody hands grasping at one another, and they sleep for fifteen hours.

Sam wakes up to birdsong, and the first things he sees are his own hands. They're hooked into fists in Dean's shirt, and he doesn't recognize them for a few blissful seconds, doesn't associate them with himself, because they are so caked with dirt and ash and dried blood that they don't even look like a person's hands. They look like a movie makeup version of a psycho killer's hands.

And then he does recognize them, and he launches himself to his feet in a staggering series of inelegant motions that he understands means his body is fucked up, but not badly enough to stop him from hurling himself into one of the open stalls to fall on his knees and throw up. Dean is right behind him, he tucks himself over and around Sam without a word, nudging one cocked knee under Sam's chest to hold him upright before Sam's elbows give out. Sam grasps at the leg of Dean's jeans, stiff with dirt and blood, and throws up some more, until there are tears streaming from his eyes and snot from his nose and he is retching up bile, until after that, when he is shuddering and heaving up nothing, and after that, when he is merely letting Dean's leg hold him up and Dean's hands keep him still while he hitches out silent paroxysms of guilt and grief and fury and grief and guilt. 

When he's done, Dean gives him a bottle and Sam rinses out his mouth and scrubs at his face.

He doesn't know how long that had taken, but it was long enough that the birds have fucked off somewhere.

They clean their hands with wet wipes until they run out, and then use holy water, and Sam starts to weep silently halfway through, and it takes forever to reach even passably human skin.

They eat poptarts using the wrappers to hold them, and between the two of them they wipe out an entire family pack sized box. They drink some holy water -- it's all they have -- and lay back down.

Sam is awake long enough to recognize that his body is more than fucked up. It is used up. He is used up. He is still starving, but he's too tired to care, and he will put some time aside later to think about how hot their metabolisms had run while they were superhuman. At the moment, he just accepts that they won't be going anywhere today, and maybe not tomorrow either.

They sleep again.

Sam wakes to a low grinding sound of pure misery. Dean is hunched up against Sam, the top of his head pushing into Sam's sternum, his elbows digging into Sam's lowest ribs, his fists clenched at either side of his head. Dean's knees are jammed into the fronts of Sam's thighs. It's afternoon, by the slant of the light, they've lost another few hours, and Dean is asleep. Sam has never seen Dean look so small or so obviously wounded, awake or asleep. Sam can't see his face, and he won't intrude enough to even imagine what it might look like.

Under normal circumstances, it is understood that Sam will lay awake until Dean settles, will eventually fall asleep again after, and will never mention it happened at all.

Sam can't. He can't, he is hurt, too, he is so hurt that the idea of keeping silent vigil over Dean's misery makes him want to scream, and when Dean makes that low, aching noise again, Sam's chest hitches and hitches until Sam gives up trying and drags Dean in even closer, wraps his arms and his legs around him. He feels Dean wake up; he couldn't get any tenser, but his breathing changes. It gets louder, more like voiceless cries. Dean doesn't try to get away, he doesn't stretch out. If anything, he crunches himself down even smaller, and Sam hates that so much, it is so wrong, that Sam loses control of himself entirely and rolls Dean under him, makes a bridge out of his longer body, makes a cave, and helps Dean huddle into it until, after a long time, Dean's breathing evens out into sleep again, and even then Sam can't make himself move away. He listens to Dean snoring softly and stays bowed over him, like Sam might be able to do something, deflect it or shield from it, it doesn't make sense but Sam can't help it. He stays where he is until Dean starts to stretch out on his own, until his sleep posture becomes more familiar, at least, even if it's not as easy as usual. 

Some time passes. Sam doesn't sleep, but he dozes next to Dean, eased by his snoring, and he's awake as soon as Dean raises a hand to his face. Dean winces himself upright, and tips his head. His neck pops in three places, and Dean groans with what sounds like relief.

"Sam," Dean says, and lays a hand on Sam's shoulder.

Dean is the only person, living or dead, that can make Sam's name sound like it means, _I know what you did for me_ , and _Thanks, man_ , and, _I will deny it forever, motherfucker_ all at the same time. 

Sam opens his eyes. "I'm starving," he says, and Dean nods seriously, as if that answers everything.

They burn their clothes outside, Dean's boots and Sam's belt excluded. Sam's running shoes are a total loss, and smell terrible while they burn. Dean looks for a hand pump or a spring or a well, but they're apparently out of luck.

Not that they were ever really _in_ much luck. But still.

Sam uses a little holy water to wipe down the outside of his belt. Dean scrubs his boots more or less clean with handfuls of crackling dead leaves.

They have enough holy water to exorcise a small infantry unit of demons, but they are just too dirty for anything less than two hot showers apiece. They do what they can, which is get as much of the blood as possible off without dangerously depleting their ammunition. They get dressed in clean clothes, which is something, at least, even if the only shoes Sam currently owns are flip-flops. Then they eat their way through half the contents of the car, which is mostly full of stuff that is terrible for you, and even worse if you're trying to heal, but it's what they have.

Sam makes a mental note not to leave emergency food supplies up to Dean, to handle it himself so they'll have decent stuff on hand the next time they... they...

"Sammy," Dean says gently, and Sam looks up and sees that Dean is trying to pry a crushed and crumbling plastic package of chocolate Hostess Donettes out of Sam's shaking fist. Sam lets Dean pull it away and brush sticky chocolate coating off Sam's hand, and then pull him right up against Dean's chest. Sam's eyes are dry, but he's shaking and heaving for breath, and then Dean hooks his hands under Sam's armpits and drags him bodily into Dean's lap, as though Sam weren't far too huge and heavy for that, as though they were little again, and Sam had dreamed badly or hurt himself, or just needed his brother.

Sam turns in toward Dean and Dean murmurs into his hair, "Not your fault, not your fault, not your fault," in a thick, quiet voice, and it goes on for a while before Sam realizes that Dean is rocking him gently, and that Sam has stopped shaking and gasping, and is almost dozing.

Sam eventually straightens and sits up, and Dean stands up and stomps around exaggeratedly to regain feeling in his extremities, and it isn't enough to cross the expanse of awful despair in Sam's mind, but it's enough to make things feel a little more normal, as though it's _possible_ to cross it. So he rolls his eyes exaggeratedly in response, hoping to share that possibility.

They reload their guns, they remake the trap, which looks pretty sad and bedraggled in the strong light of late afternoon, they lay out a little cache of weapons inside it, they take the sleeping bags out and shake most of the dirt out of them. They both go through holy water like they can't get enough, and make several trips outside to get rid of recycled holy water. They eat more junk food, and they start to talk about leaving in the morning, still feeling vaguely shitty and exhausted, but also feeling restless. Sam thinks it's probably all the sugar and saturated fat.

A little before dusk, Dean goes to ransack the car for food one more time, like he has somehow missed the snack that he absolutely has to have in any of the last three pillagings. He's going for the front seat, this time, even though they don't keep food in the front seat unless Sam has a half-eaten granola bar stashed in the glovebox, and Dean won't want that even if it's there. Sam is thinking about mocking him in a vaguely hopeful way when Dean sort of stumbles backward out of the passenger seat, looking stricken.

Sam is on his feet and moving before he even has to think about it, and Dean flings out a hand to stop him. Sam stops, and watches as Dean leans back in slowly, reluctantly, and comes out again with a machete in each hand.

Sam is genuinely surprised to see them, even though he can remember throwing them into the floorboard when they climbed back into the Impala. He is surprised, he had forgotten them, somehow, he had. No, he hadn't forgotten them. He had deliberately not remembered them. He had blotted them out of his memory, he had eliminated a part of that horror by eliminating something associated with it, and Sam is well on his way to freaking out about giving himself PTSD when he glances at Dean's face.

Dean is staring down the crusted length of Sam's machete. Near the curve at the end of the blade, most probably adhered with dried blood, is a pink plastic barrette shaped like a daisy. Sam can immediately identify it, even. It had belonged to the demon-girl. He can picture them, a matched set, holding her hair behind her ears, doing nothing at all to conceal the age and malice in her eyes.

Dean is looking at it with a wincing grief etched around his eyes that's twisted up with a terrible resignation, and when he meets Sam's gaze, he looks hollowed out, some essential Dean-part removed, left vacant. He doesn't even look away. He just looks at Sam, all that anguish open on his face, and that's almost the worst part. Dean would never do that, he would never even let Sam glimpse it, if it weren't so huge Dean just can't carry it. "I'm sorry you had to," Dean whispers. "Sammy, I'm sorry you had to."

Dean doesn't specify what, but he doesn't need to do that, either. Sam knows what. Everything. Dean is sorry for every bad thing Sam has ever had to see or ever had to do, and if that little bit of plastic had been stuck to Dean's machete and not Sam's, this would not be happening the same way. Dean would grieve for that girl either way, but this way, Dean feels like he has to grieve for her and for Sam, because Dean lives in his heart.

Sam lives, and has always lived, in his head. When Dean tells him it's not his fault, and Sam's logic tells him that Dean is right, Sam actually starts to believe that. It takes time, and Sam still aches with it, but he can see past it. Not clearly, and not without moments of doubt, but he knows there will be a time when it is not blanketing every moment, coloring every thought. He knows that it's poisoning him, but it's not poisoning him in some way that he can never recover from.

Dean doesn't work that way. Dean deals in reality, and the reality is, that girl is dead, and Dean will grieve for his part in her death, even while understanding clearly that the demon is ultimately responsible. Dean will grieve because he's a good man, but he will stop grieving eventually because she doesn't get less dead the more Dean grieves for her. Time will heal that.

It's _Sam's_ part in her death that Dean will never heal from. Because Dean keeps Sam safe, that is his mission in life, and Sam can't pinpoint exactly when he passed whatever line Dean had designated as maximum acceptable injury, but Sam is sure it is years and years in the past. Which means everything since that invisible line is Dean's responsibility, it is Dean's _burden_ , and he accepts it, and most of the time he carries it so quietly that Sam is hardly aware of it. Sam doesn't think about it, because it has been this way, always. It's normal, for a given definition of normal. It's Winchester-normal.

Which means that all of Dean's hurt, that vast and aching pain Sam had only really seen and interpreted correctly a couple of days ago, all of that is Sam. All of that, punishment, God, all that need for penance, all of it unhealed for Sam.

And Sam has to let that hurt him later. He doesn't have time for his own hurt, which is pretty small, comparatively speaking. He doesn't blame himself for what Dean has been carrying. He will probably have moments in which he does, but right now it's obvious that none of it is Sam's fault. Sam had never asked Dean to carry it, and hadn't understood for most of his life that Dean was doing it. If anyone is to blame, it's probably their Dad, though Sam is sure that had never been Dad's intention either. Mostly, it just is. No one is to blame, and there is no way to instantly fix it. Sam thinks he might be able to see past it, some day, but he won't think about that now, either. He knows it's there, and Dean is right. Sam is good at figuring shit out.

It's this piece of it, right now, Dean's present grief and pain, that Sam has to deal with. He can't make it go away, he can't banish it; Dean will have to grieve and struggle through Rawlins just like Sam will. They will figure it out, they will both heal from those twenty-four people.

Dean can't accept the comfort or reality of _not your fault_ for his responsibility for Sam, though, for Sam's hurt. Dean will just add that to what he's already got, and it will be just another open wound in Dean's heart, and Sam knows how to help with that hurt. He only barely knows, and using it in this situation is clearly going to change the context radically, but.

But he's going to try it anyway. Sam will not aid and abet Dean's raging savior complex. 

No one has to tell him that doing it is dangerous, that it might not help, but the real truth, the deep down in Sam's lizard brain truth, is that Sam doesn't think it can really hurt, either. They are both too giving and forgiving of one another, each in their own ways. They are cliche codependent, they will never love anyone like they love each other, they are so deeply ingrained that Sam believes Dean when he says there is nothing Sam could do that would make Dean leave. Sam believes him. Sam feels the same way.

They are both so fucked up, so very fucked up, that yeah, this could be bad, but even if it doesn't work, it probably won't make the fucked up any worse.

He steps forward, and Dean swings both the machete blades down automatically, keeps the sharp bits away from Sam. Sam takes them both by the hilts and Dean lets him. Sam puts them back in the passenger floorboard. He'll take care of them later. Now, he pulls Dean out of the arc of the door. Dean comes away easily, and pauses only when Sam reaches past him to grab the top of the door and swings it shut. Sam leaves his hand on the roof of the Impala for a few seconds; he has an idea, he's just working on a tactical approach.

He could easily fuck this up no matter how he does it, but that doesn't mean he should just do it any old way.

Anything they have done during sex is out of the question, and that means the simplest means isn't an option. Sam doesn't want this tangled up with what they do in bed, or not yet, at any rate. Later it might not matter, but for now it does.

Sam unbuckles his belt. Dean is watching him with his eyebrows a little arched in puzzlement until Sam takes the buckle end in his hand and wraps the leather once around his fist. 

Dean's whole face opens so wide with surprise that it looks a little like wonder. Not 'I won the lottery!' wonder, but 'Is that even humanly possible?' wonder. It passes, and Dean's brows draw down and together a little for two or three seconds. Sam can see him stringing the logic chain together, a faint line of misery between his brows. That passes, and Dean looks uncertain with a dash of what Sam is pretty sure is Sam's own feeling of 'what can it really hurt, at this point?' Although it's Dean, so it's probably more like: 'Why the fuck not?'

Sam steps past Dean and walks around the car, leaning his ass back against the hood. After a handful of seconds, Dean follows him and does the same thing. When Sam glances over, Dean has his 'I don't want to talk about it' face firmly in place.

Sam doesn't smile, but he does feel a fond warmth that might have led to smiling in the past, and probably will again in the future.

Sam doesn't really want to talk about it either, but he has to make it real for Dean, give him some actual perspective. It's not even that Dean doesn't know it, just that he can't remember it right now, while he's so hurt. It doesn't mean anything, is made less real in relation to Dean's hurt.

"How many people are in Rawlins?" Sam asks. It's a short, absolute question, which is the type most likely to be answered by Dean in any direct fashion.

"You said about ten thousand," Dean answers grudgingly.

"And we killed twenty-four," Sam says, careful not to stress any word in that sentence.

Dean doesn't say anything, and Sam doesn't look at him.

He tallies people shoveled unconscious quickly, and says, "How many did we knock out?"

Dean pauses, probably tallying for himself. "Eighteen," he says finally.

Sam has it at twenty, but it doesn't matter that much. It's just a real number. "So forty-two people got close to it between dusk and when we got there," Sam says.

Dean doesn't say anything, but Sam can feel him turning the number of people versus the number of minutes around in his head, looking at both of them. They're heavy on the people side. Way heavy. Sam doesn't spin it out any further than that. That's enough information to make the actual _potential_ for mayhem real in Dean's head again, past his sorrow. For the moment.

Even if no one else had come, which neither of them believes, forty-two people could cut a pretty big swathe of death through Rawlins alone. Hundreds, depending on how clever they were about it. It's hard to say without knowing anything about the motivation of any person or creature present, but from their only source of previous information, real information, it's not just possible, but probable.

Dean is a hunter, and 'probable death toll' is as real as it gets to him.

Sam turns, and Dean is already looking at him. His face is pale and his eyes are weary, but he's wearing that still, waiting face that Sam remembers. Sam decides this is the 'I'll take a chance' face.

Sam tugs at Dean's arm until Dean lets himself be pulled close.

He doesn't say 'It could have been so much worse,' because that's a bullshit excuse as far as Dean is concerned, whether it's true or not. Instead, Sam says, "I would hate myself right now if we had ignored Chris' e-mail. I would probably never have forgiven myself."

Dean turns into Sam and hooks the crook of his elbow around the back of Sam's neck. Sam lets Dean pull his head down against Dean's shoulder.

"I hate what we had to do," Sam says. "I hate it so much I can't think about very much else right now. But I don't hate that we went there, that we did our job. I don't hate myself. I don't hate _us._ "

Which is as close as Sam knows how to get to, 'I am fundamentally okay; you do not have to be fucked up on my behalf,' in a real way, a way that Dean can accept.

"Okay, Sammy," Dean says, and tips his forehead to touch Sam's temple. "Okay."

Sam turns and catches Dean's lips, grateful that Dean just kisses him back, no questions, easy comforting kisses. Dean lets Sam kiss his cheek and his forehead and his chin with near-infinite patience, but eventually he takes Sam's hand, the one holding Sam's belt, and looks down at it.

"This," Dean says. He throws a look at Sam. "This is not the same."

Which is Dean speak for: This will not end in blowjobs. 

Sam feels another instant that would have been a smile two days ago, maybe two days from now, flutter across his mind.

"I know what this is," he tells Dean. Dean looks at him intently for several seconds, and then takes a step back and pulls his t-shirt off over his head.

Sam moves away from the car and gestures Dean toward it at the same time, and Dean shoots Sam another look, but bends over the hood, arms outstretched, feet planted.

Sam moves to the left fender. "Closer to me," he says, and, "Put your arms up more."

Sam has never hit anyone with a belt in his life, but he knows about physicality, and he's pretty sure he could really fuck Dean up with this thing. He knows to avoid the kidneys, and he knows if he is tentative about it, this whole enterprise will have been ultimately useless, but that doesn't tell him how hard it is okay to hit Dean.

"I've never done this," Sam says.

"I won't let you fuck it up," Dean says, looking calmly at him, and that is exactly what Sam needed to hear. That Dean isn't going to let Sam really injure him in the name of penance. It makes sense, because Dean has always done this with rules in place, and Sam knows those rules don't allow for beating people to death, but Sam still needed to hear it.

It turns out to be not that hard. Sam has good aim and an unparalleled ability to read Dean's body language, and aside from some practice, that seems to be all he really needs.

The first two swings are enough to know how the belt moves through the air and how Dean is handling that amount of force, and Sam adjusts his aim and hits Dean harder and harder and harder until he gets the little involuntary jerk of Dean's arms that signals the moment right before Dean actually tries to defend himself, and Sam holds it right there throughout the rest of it. Dean lets out brief, sharp shouts of pain for the last three, but goes limp and panting after twenty-four, at the same time that Sam takes a step back, like they had both known the number the entire time.

Sam gives him a minute to get his breath, and then nudges him in the shoulder with a bottle of holy water. Dean stirs, and then slowly pushes himself up and off the hood. He rolls his shoulders, but he doesn't even wince. He takes the water and drinks, eyes closed. His face is wet and he's not hard in his jeans, but he's also not hard along the line of his shoulders, isn't hard anywhere that Sam can see. His body is loose, even his face is quiet. He almost looks like he's sleeping.

Dean hands the bottle back and runs a hand across his dirty hair, and then opens his eyes and looks at Sam.

He doesn't look peaceful or calm, exactly. His eyes are lucid, and Sam can still see sorrow, but it's not the same. There is definitely something. Something better than before. He looks almost satisfied.

Maybe satisfaction is equivalent to peace, if you're Dean.

Sam isn't sure if the prohibition on blowjobs applies to cuddling, but he decides to give it a shot.

It doesn't, not even a little. Sam barely has his hand on Dean's arm before Dean is tucking himself up under Sam's chin, slinging one arm up over Sam's shoulder unselfconsciously, like Dean doesn't think even for a second about how tall either of them are in relation to each other. Sam winds his arms carefully around Dean's lower back and the very top of his left shoulder. Dean makes a quiet noise that sounds squashed against Sam's chest and leans most of his weight against Sam.

Sam, who is somehow almost totally unprepared for Dean to be quite so soft and sweet, goes a little crazy and kisses the top of Dean's head about twenty times. When they stand there for over a minute, and Dean has begun to sway a little on his feet, Sam realizes that it's his job to now do something with Dean.

Sam half-drags him to their nest of sleeping bags and eases him down into it by bumping his knees out from under him, so Dean goes down belly first. Sam can't remember what happened to Dean's shirt, and sleeping in jeans is not a big deal, but he has to wrestle with Dean's boots for several minutes. Then he gets undressed to his jeans, too, because he isn't tired yet, but he is still at least a little anxious, and he doesn't want to leave Dean alone.

Sam is staring at the welts on Dean's back in the dying light, red and white and, in a few places, purple. They look angry and unfamiliar and not even close to Dean's bloody lip or his bright red ass. It's not the same, Sam knows it isn't, but he's also aware that another time, it could be, for Dean. Sam is trying to figure out if it could be for Sam.

"'M fine, Sam," Dean murmurs, and turns onto his side to face Sam and grabs Sam's arm and drags it down to where he wants it and unselfconsciously uses it for a pillow. His eyes are sleepy. Sam puts his other hand carefully on Dean's waist, and Dean tips himself forward until he's lying half on top of Sam, all his limbs every which way, which is how he usually sleeps, and is in some way deeply reassuring. "Touch it so you can sleep," Dean whispers.

"Dude, my hands are filthy," Sam objects.

"Dude, we're both filthy everywhere," Dean says with sleepy patience. "I'm not bleedin', Sam. Just do it."

So Sam does. He splays his hand wide across the center of Dean's back and feels the welts like raised runes under his palm. He slides it down as gently as he can, and Dean sighs out a contented murmur, and that is what makes it work. That noise, given with no hesitation. Sam can suddenly think about Dean's loose body and his arm flung up over Sam's shoulder and see how the things that lead up to that could be amazing and good, in the right context. Another time, when this is far enough away.

The way the welts feel like runes under his hand stands out in Sam's mind, settles there. He likes the metaphor. It makes this... something bigger, in his mind. Something with wider possibilities, something versatile.

Sam strokes along Dean's back again, and Dean makes a sound that starts with a sigh and ends with a snore.


	17. 17

Sam doesn't sleep. He's tired enough to do it, his body is still aching with weariness and overuse, but he has to think about it to get past it. He isn't built like Dean, and his own method of coping is more like analyzing the the situation repeatedly, looking at it every way he can, until he's satisfied that they did the best they could do with what they had. He will probably do this dozens of times before he can really move away from the immediate horror of it, and it's best to start now and get as much of it out of the way as he can.

He waits until Dean is deeply asleep, and then he retrieves the machetes from the car and sits under the hole in the roof so he has some light to work with, and he cleans them slowly and thoroughly while he thinks, while Dean sleeps. This way works for both of them. Dean won't have to see them like this again, and can put it aside in his head. Sam wishes he could be that way, but he can't, so for him, it's like the cemetery. He's putting things to rights, the best way he knows how. He's putting himself and Dean to rights, he is pushing them toward acceptance as well as he knows how.

They can grieve, they should grieve, but they are going to have to continue functioning while they do it. They are taking these couple of days to give themselves a little time, which is more than they usually do. They usually do it with miles of highway, with Sam working it over in his brain in the passenger seat, and Dean using his car and his music and his concern for Sam to overlie that grief, soothe it into something manageable. It works, mostly, but it's probably not the best thing for either of them, and they've never had something this big to soothe.

The closest they had come was River Grove, and even then, Sam and Dean hadn't killed those people, and there had been no bodies to bury, no bloody death dealt with their own hands. Maybe this even has to do with River Grove, in part. It hadn't been that long ago, and their helplessness then probably isn't helpful to their perspective on this. The results are different, but the mechanism had been eerily similar. Things that weren't people anymore, but weren't quite demons either. The only big difference had been the way that they had disappeared, afterward, and the way that neither of them really knows what had happened to them.

Are the people of River Grove butchering their way through everyplace close to them? Sam hasn't been looking for it. It hadn't even crossed his mind to consider it. There were no bodies, though. Sam will not be able to stop himself from trying to find out, once they are strong enough to leave here, when they get back to the real world.

They're both control freaks, in their own ways. Dean has to feel that he'd doing something in order to feel like he's in control. Sam has to feel like he knows something, everything, to achieve the same result.

Sam doesn't want to know more about how it had been done, he really doesn't. Even knowing it would be dangerous, but his brain doesn't always listen to his common sense, and he's already built a little book for it in his head, a little list of things that combines what happened, what Sam and Dean actually saw and did, with what was in Dad's journal, and with speculation built on leaps of logic and intuition.

That's Sam's job, it's the place he has to fill. Dad had been that, when it had been Dad and Dean, but Sam already knows he's better at it than either Dean or Dad had ever been. He's better built to be able to keep information in his head and cross-reference it readily, better suited to digging for information they don't have yet, knowing where to look and how, better suited to keeping things organized, though it is Dean, more often, that knows how to implement it. Experience, probably, and Dean's own brand of subtle intuition, his ability to disregard some facts in order to focus on the ones that are immediately useful.

Sam has the moments of insight that carry them into things and give them the ammunition to fight, but it's mostly Dean who knows how to look at the ammunition and use it to its greatest effect.

They had been so ill prepared this time, had had so little time to piece things together, and the cost had been so high. But no matter how costly the victory, it _had_ been a victory. Even if it's only the kind of victory that you have to think of in terms of how much worse it could have been.

To some degree, most of their victories are like that. They don't have a supernatural bloodhound that points them in the direction of terrible things, they have to rely on things that have already happened and things that people actually report and their own understanding of the way the things they do look when they're relayed by people that don't know what's really going on. There is almost always a death toll already in progress when they come into town.

The big difference here is that they usually aren't the ones that actually create it themselves. Chris was right; they have the capacity to deal death, when it comes right down to it. They are both capable of being killers. But usually they aren't. Usually they don't have to be killers of people. And it's hard not to think of those twenty-four dead as not-people.

He knows it in his head, but his heart knows that they have friends and family who are missing them, who don't understand why they are gone, who don't realize that if their loved one had come home, they would probably be dead shortly thereafter. Sam doesn't know for sure, but the awareness in those people's eyes, the way the guy with the tree branch had smiled at him, he thinks they would have remembered their friends and family, that they would have been the first wave of victims. He can't help thinking of the mother, dragging her wailing frightened son behind her.

He would have probably been the first victim. Sam had stepped into that darkness, uncalled, and come out again unchanged. He suspects little Jimmy would have been unchanged as well, and would have been torn apart by the rest of them, probably by his mother.

The thought forces him to put his head between his knees and breathe deeply until the hurt horror passes.

It helps to know that it hadn't happened that way, though. It helps to have seen with his own eyes at least three people that they had saved. It helps to know that there are are surely others, so surely that Sam is comfortable calling it fact in his mind, but it helps even more that he had _seen_ some of them. That they would have to heal, just like Sam and Dean will have to heal, but their healing will be easier, maybe, because they had been afraid, they had been hurt, but they hadn't had to see the worst of it. They hadn't had to live through it in quite the same way.

And that feels like saving them all over again, knowing that they didn't have to see. Like Sam and Dean had saved them twice.

Especially the kid.

Sometime before dawn, but not that long before, Sam puts the machetes in the open trunk and climbs back into the sleeping bags with Dean. Dean doesn't wake up, but he turns toward Sam in his sleep, and that does as much to make Sam hurt less as anything else he's thought about.

***

When Sam wakes up sometime in the brightness of late morning, Dean is not there. Sam shoots to his feet, alarmed, until he finds a note stuck in place with a knife in the dirt inside the trap. It says 'foraging for food and water, don't freak out.' 

Sam doesn't freak out, but he thinks, for the first time, about Bobby and the coven, and about how they're probably freaking out right about now, and has to do some foraging himself to find his phone.

It's off, which Sam knows it hadn't been when they had headed past the church into the woods, but he's not very surprised by it. Electronics sometimes go kind of buggy around some things, and when Sam pushes the on button, it comes up right away. He's even got a decent signal.

He also has sixteen voicemails. He winces a little, and decides not to listen to them.

He scrolls through his missed calls instead. Twelve are Bobby. Three are Claire. One is Chris.

He calls Bobby first, and spends the first four minutes or so listening in silence while Bobby unleashes a tirade of fear-laden vitriol until he finally gets it out of his system.

Haltingly, Sam tells him as much as he can without giving him a lot of solid information.

Bobby listens in silence until Sam is done, and is silent for a few seconds afterward, too. Finally, he says, "There's stuff you're not tellin'," but it doesn't sound accusatory.

"There's stuff no one should know," Sam says. "Stuff I wish I didn't know. I can't think of any way to tell it or write it down so that it doesn't make the world a less safe place to live in."

Sam can almost hear Bobby nodding. "You get their book of shadows?"

"No," Sam says. "They didn't have anything. But I took pictures of their faces. I'll send them to you when we're someplace I can do it safely. Maybe you can help us track down who they are so we can figure out where to look. It has to be destroyed."

"Yeah, reckon it does. You boys okay?"

"No," Sam says, voice a little strangled and wet. "No, but we'll get to okay."

"I know," Bobby says, sounding calmly certain, and Sam feels a kind of glad relief. Bobby's certainty helps to shore up his own.

"Can you do something for me, Bobby?" Sam asks, a spark of an idea that fills him with something like hope.

"What do you need?" Bobby asks with uncommon kindness.

"We told you about River Grove, you remember."

"Yeah, I remember."

"Can you take a look at the violent crime statistics anyplace close to there. Can you look for anything unusual, anything that's higher than it should be." It's a little unfair, maybe, to lay this part of the burden on Bobby, but Sam is pretty sure that Bobby won't mind. That Bobby will be able to look at it like a task, not like a potential catastrophic failure.

"I already been doing that," Bobby says. "Dean asked me to, after. I been keeping an eye on it, and it ain't nothing like that. Whatever happened there, it wasn't the same as this."

The wash of relief Sam feels is big enough to make him feel unsteady on his feet.

"Thanks," Sam says. "Thanks, Bobby."

"Next time, call me sooner when you ain't dead or evil," Bobby tells him grumpily.

"Yeah, Bobby. Sorry."

"Yeah, well," Bobby says, with a little sigh. "Winchesters." It sounds like a long-suffering complaint.

Sam calls Claire, and gives her an even more edited version of events. She listens seriously, and Sam is pretty sure she, too, knows that there are things he isn't telling, but she doesn't even ask. White witches know, like Dean knows, that there are some things they shouldn't know, things that should never be fucked with.

"I'm glad the two of you are alright," she says gravely.

"The spell," Sam begins, unsure of how to explain. "The bracelets."

"Did what they were supposed to do," she says with equanimity. "We can't feel them, not usually, but we felt it this time. We felt the force of them, and we all understand what that means. We are blessed, Sam. We are blessed that our protection helped you."

"Did Chris have another vision?" Sam wants to know, because one of his missed calls had been Chris', and Sam already understands that Claire is usually Chris' voice, that he speaks through her like Dean often speaks through Sam.

"No, not a vision. He was just worried. He sent you there. He was worried."

"Okay. Tell him we're okay."

There is a silence in which Sam suspects Claire is deciding whether or not she really believes that they're okay, but she finally just says, "I'll pass it on."

"One more thing. Do you know the term 'hollowed ground?'"

There's another pause, and this time Sam is sure that she's sifting through her mental library, as Sam often does. "Maybe," she says finally. "It sounds familiar, like I read it somewhere. I can look, ask the rest of the coven."

"That would be good. We need to get rid of some, and I have no idea how."

"We'll find something," Claire promises. "It may just need cleansing, and the coven can take care of that, if it's what needs doing. We'll find out."

"Thanks, Claire. We'll call soon."

"Okay," Claire says. "Be well, Sam. Tell Dean."

Sam smiles a little for the first time. "We will. In a little while."

It's after noon before Dean comes back. Sam spends that time thinking, thinking, putting it all into some kind of perspective in his head. It's still too close to be perfect, but it does help. It helps enough that he is starting to feel less hollow inside.

Dean's presence helps that even more. Dean just being in Sam's sight makes Sam feel steadier, more himself.

Dean comes in carrying a long stick bound with four rabbits, already skinned and cleaned. Sam wonders if they had been hard to gut, if the blood and flesh had been hurtful, and then knows they hadn't been. Not for Dean. Dean is rock-solid clear on the difference between dead rabbits and dead people, and the gore wouldn't have called it back the way it might have for Sam. It makes Sam wonder if Dean knows that about Sam. If he had cleaned them apart, for Sam, on purpose.

"No water," Dean says petulantly. "Not even a fucking stream, least not that I could track down. But, hey, supper!"

And they have lots of holy water still. It isn't survival Dean was looking for, it was cleanliness. They both want to be clean.

But it's almost easy to build a fire and roast the rabbits slowly over it, seasoning it with a little salt, which is all they have, but there's plenty of it, at least. They eat them right off the skewers, fingers getting a little burned and greasy, and they almost never have to do this, live off the land, but they both know how. Sometimes things they're hunting aren't close to a burger joint. And the rabbits are fantastic, real food to fuel them, help them heal, and Dean smiles across the fire at Sam, his lips shiny with grease, and Sam is so glad to see it his eyes prickle a little even as he smiles back. 

After they eat, Dean spends some time sharpening the machetes, which certainly need it after that much use. He does it the way he always handles weapons, carefully but comfortably. He doesn't look the way he had, pulling them bloody out of the car, and that helps, too, helps Sam move them apart from what they had been used to do, to make them into just tools again, just something they need, that they use to live.

Sam watches, letting the familiarity of it soothe him.

"Can I look at your back?" Sam asks later.

Dean gives him a sideways look, but shrugs his t-shirt off without comment. Most of the welts have faded smooth, just Dean's long, lean back. There are a few marks, dark-looking lines of bruising, but only a few. Sam touches them, and they're smooth skin. Dean doesn't move, just lets Sam use his fingers to map out a gentle exploration until he's comfortable with it. Then Dean shrugs his shirt back on, and turns around to give Sam a brief kiss, as though it's easy, like they've been doing this forever, like it doesn't even occur to Dean that he's violating years of don't touch me rules.

Sam remembers it from when he was a kid. Not the kissing, obviously, but he remembers when Dean touched him all the time, easily, though he can't really remember exactly when it had stopped, either because Dean got too old for casual touching, or more likely because Dean decided Sam was too old for it.

Sam sits in the back seat of the Impala for a couple of hours, doing his own part of the research into hollowed ground. He's got a limited amount of reference material, but he goes through it anyway, just in case, because they are already here. If he can figure out how to do it, it's easier and safer for them to take care of it than it is to send the coven. Those bodies will be found. That place isn't far enough off the beaten track for them to lay undiscovered forever. The speed with which people had made it to the cemetery confirms that, and the last thing Sam wants is to send the witches wandering around a place where their very presence will be incriminating. If it takes white magic to get the job done, Sam will let them, but he'd rather not have to.

He comes up with nothing, and isn't surprised. The books he owns, he mostly knows back and forth. If not every detail, he knows the general contents, and he's read a lot more than he's ever owned. A lot more. And he'd never heard of it before. He puts his books away with a sigh, and when he gets out, he sees that Dean has packed up the weapons and the sleeping bags, though the devil's trap is still in place.

"Are we going?" Sam asks, but he's not really surprised. His body is mostly healed. He needs to be clean, he needs decent food, and he needs more sleep, but it's no longer debilitating need.

Dean says, "I want to go to Rawlins," however, which does surprise Sam. Not for long, though.

When he thinks about it, it isn't that weird. Dean wants to see it. He wants to see that town, he wants to make sure it's still there and still alive, and Sam could object, as there are some fairly good, smart reasons not to ever be seen in or near Rawlins, but he doesn't. There are two people there who could definitely identify the two of them by sight, and almost twenty more that might recognize them if they saw them. It's possible that any one of those they had knocked out could have filed a police report, and given descriptions of them. It's even more possible that someone had seen the Impala parked out in front of the burning church, and reported that.

It's definitely risky, but Sam wants to see it, too. He doesn't need it made real the way Dean does. Sam can take its reality and essential well-being on faith. So could Dean, if he really had to, but this will help, and Sam is willing to chance it.

"We should take the long way around," is all Sam says, because if there are already cops at the cemetery, it's better not to drive by there. He doesn't know where Cross Creek Road lets out, but it's likely to be somewhere that they can make a loop back to Rawlins. Dean just nods, and it's late enough that it'll probably be dark before they get there, which is all to the better. Even in mostly clean clothes, they're both still filthy, and the Impala is a hell of a lot less distinctive in the dark.

Sam helps Dean get rid of the last of the traces of them, obliterating the trap and stomping the ground around it to fill in most of the traces of it. It's hard to stomp in flip-flops, and Dean snorts at him. Sam can't even be irritated, because that was almost a laugh, and he can feel his own face curling into a small, sheepish smile in response.

Dean pulls the car out of the barn, and Sam banishes the tread marks with his flip-flops, and the track that lead up to the barn isn't really a problem, as it's so rutted it's unlikely to leave any real identifying marks. They pull onto Cross Creek Road headed north, for what Sam sincerely hopes is the last time.

They hit a paved road going west after twenty miles, and are on it for six miles before Sam sees a road sign naming it Angler Road. They stay on Angler until dark; eventually they hit a Y intersection that angles back north one way and southwest the other. They take Gun Club Road southwest, and it runs into Highway 287, which a sign immediately informs them will take them to Rawlins in three miles.

They drive all the way through, which is about four miles, until they pass a sign that signals the exit to interstate 80, and then Dean circles back and stops at a Super 8 right off the highway. Sam gives Dean a dubious look.

"I want the local news," Dean says, looking a little mulish, like he thinks Sam is going to object.

Sam doesn't, and Dean checks them in, because his short hair makes the fact that he's gone several days with no shower after a bloodbath a little less obvious. Their room is all the way at the end of the hotel, and Dean pulls around the back corner to park. They tote their shit inside, and the Super 8 isn't palatial by any means, but it's on the nicer end of the places that they usually stay, and big enough that there probably won't be an issue with hot water.

Sam showers first, and doesn't let himself look down to see if he's shedding pink water and flakes of dried blood into the drain for the first five minutes. After that, he works his ass off to actually get really clean, washes his hair twice and his body three times. He gets the places he doesn't usually think about, the back of his neck, behind his ears, all the places that his body creases, but he's still got blood under his fingernails when he's done. He's going to need something with bristles to get that, even though his nails are very short.

When he gets out, he glances at the mirror and sees that the scabs on the spell are starting to peel away on their own, leaving pale scar tissue exposed. He leans forward to get a good look, and can't quite stop himself from peeling away the ones that are still there. Most of them uncover more smooth scars. Only a few of them are still firmly attached over healing cuts. The impala is one of them. Sam leaves that one, and peels the other ones away anyway. They reveal red, slightly raw looking skin, but nothing bleeds. They're weird, the scarring is weird. Sam has had plenty of wounds deep enough to scar, and there's a progression. Fine, pale scars like most of these should be from old wounds, long-healed. New scars are red or at least pink. And that's leaving aside entirely the fact that it hasn't been long enough for these to scar at all. These should still be wounds underneath thick protective scabs.

He isn't that surprised, really. He'd already seen that it was healing fast. But it's still weird.

When Sam comes out of the bathroom, Dean has the local news on and is contemplating it silently. Sam hands him a towel, and Dean takes the hint and goes to take his own shower. Sam digs out his toothbrush, brushes his teeth quickly in the steaming bathroom, and then uses it under the faucet to clean under his nails. It works, though it take a while. He leaves it on the sink for Dean, making sure Dean knows not to brush his teeth with it, and then takes his own turn sitting at the end of the bed, watching what's left of the news.

There's nothing about any disappearances. Maybe they'd covered that story while Dean was watching. Sam leaves Dean a note, and walks to a convenience store that shares a parking lot with the Super 8. He buys coffee for both of them, sodas for both of them, a new toothbrush, and a local newspaper. The clerk doesn't look twice at him.

Dean's still in the shower when Sam gets back. When he finally comes out, he walks over in his towel to read the paper over Sam's shoulder, slurping his coffee in a reassuringly disgusting manner.

The paper is still carrying an article on the front page. It makes sense, as it's a pretty small town. It's light on information, which means the authorities don't know anything to tell. It reports the total number of missing at sixteen, which probably just means that some people haven't been missed yet, or that some of them weren't from Rawlins, but just happened to be in the area at the time. Like Dad and Dean had been. Maybe they'd stopped for pie. The police, according to the paper, have no leads, but there are pictures of all the missing, which Sam doesn't look closely at.

There's nothing in the rest of the paper about assaults or muggings or anything else that might be the people they'd whacked unconscious, though it's possible there might have been yesterday. But Sam thinks those people probably hadn't reported anything. If Dean's description of how it felt to be under its influence before is accurate, then those people might not have any idea how they even got there. At most, they probably know they were going somewhere they wanted to go, but not where, and probably not why, at least not in any coherent way.

"We still shouldn't stay," Sam says, and Dean just nods.

Sam is already dressed, and Dean drags on a pair of jeans, but then just stands by his open duffel, still and silent for long enough that Sam notices and stops packing his own duffel.

"Dean?"

Dean turns toward him, his face faintly miserable. "I wanna ask you for something. You won't like it."

A coil of tension winds itself into place between Sam's shoulder blades at that, but he makes himself just stand still and wait.

"You used your..." Dean says, and touches his temple and makes a pushing motion, which is enough of a description that Sam knows exactly what he means. His stomach drops a little. "I know you had to. I know we'd be dead if you didn't. But."

Sam would like to be pissed, but he can't even do that. The spell on his chest isn't actually a mark of Dean's oath. It's a mark of Sam's agreement. Dean had made a promise, but Sam had taken responsibility for that promise, too, he had made a promise of his own. Not the same promise. He had never promised not to use anything. But a promise to Dean, a promise to help him keep Sam _Sam_ , and while they don't know for sure that any of those few who had been granted those powers actually become bad people by using them, they do know that the two they had come across who used them well, used them freely, had not been poster boys for good. Or for sanity, for that matter. They don't know much about those abilities, but they know enough to be wary.

Dean is right: Sam doesn't like it.

But he does understand it, he gets why Dean feels the need.

"How?" Sam asks. He can't keep his voice from being a little clipped and sharp.

"Like before," Dean says, almost gently. "Like yesterday."

Sam considers this for a long moment, and then nods, and jerks his shirt up over his head, his heart hammering.

Dean goggles at him for a moment. It would be funny in another situation. "No, Sammy," Dean says, holding out both hands. "No."

"Oh, yeah," Sam says firmly. He unbuckles his belt and whips it out of his belt loops with a _whisk_ sound. "If you're responsible for that, so am I."

"It ain't same for you," Dean says, and actually takes a step back. "It ain't the same."

"You can't tell me that what I did to you yesterday was the same as it usually is for you, either. You needed it, and you felt better after, but during, it just hurt, didn't it? It wasn't about sex, it was about pain, actual pain, not the kind of pain that gets you off. Tell me that's not how it was," Sam demands.

Dean gives a tiny, almost invisible head shake. He face looks stark and cornered. "It won't help you the way it helps me," he whispers. "That's not how it works in your head."

"No, not usually. No. But pain is also negative reinforcement, Dean. It's something you keep to remind you of the consequences of the things you choose to do. If you need this for your head, I need that for mine." Dean looks deeply unhappy. "It has to be like this. For this one thing, when it's about this one thing, it has to be. We already agreed to share this responsibility. You made the oath, and I agreed to it. You have to let me take my share of the blame."

"Sam," Dean says, his voice a little more normal. "Sammy, it really fucking hurts."

"I know, I heard you," Sam says implacably. "I can take it."

Dean runs a hand through his damp hair and looks around the room almost aimlessly, like he's looking for a place to hide. Then he sighs out a breath, and says, "Okay."

"You do me, first," Sam says. "I'll give you exactly what you give me, Dean, so make sure it's what you need."

"Jesus Christ, Sam," Dean says, wincing a little.

Sam ignores it. "Where do you want me?" He holds out the belt for Dean, who takes it reluctantly.

Dean looks around the room for a minute, and finally says, "I can't take it on my back again. You got a hell of an arm, and it's not safe. It hurts a fuckton more across the belly and chest, but you ain't got to hit nearly as hard to make it hurt like hell. You sure, Sam?"

Sam nods tightly. He isn't, obviously. He has no clear idea what to expect. But he's going to do it anyway.

"Then back up against the long dresser thing, there, put your back to the TV."

Sam goes where directed, though he's not entirely sure of the 'back to the TV' wisdom.

"Don't lean on it," Dean says, a little annoyed now. "Just rest your ass on the dresser and get a good grip on it with your hands, put your elbows back some."

Sam does. "The bed wouldn't be better?"

Dean gives the bed a brief dismissive glance. "It' too low, and I got no real room to swing. Side-armed is better for this, anyway. You can control it better. I'm guessing you don't want a smack in the face."

Dean moves off to Sam's right, and then tosses a pillow at him. Sam catches it automatically. "Hold it up against your chest. I ain't done this in years, Sammy. And tip your chin up, just in case. This might sting your fingers a little bit."

Sam holds the pillow up, tips his chin up, but not so far that he can't see what Dean is doing.

Dean gives the pillow a crack. It sounds much louder than hitting a pillow should, Sam decides, not without some trepidation. Dean swings twice more, and then says, "Okay. Okay."

Sam tosses the pillow back in the direction of the bed and gets his hands braced again.

"Don't try and look down," Dean tells him. "If you look down and get it in the face, you were fucking asking for it."

Sam smiles a little, even though he can tell Dean is both serious and a little pissed off at Sam. It's just that Dean sounds so much like _Dean_ , and Sam is so glad to hear it.

Dean apparently sees it though. "Give you something to smile about," he mutters, and takes a swing without warning.

It cracks across the top of Sam's belly and snaps a little as it curls around Sam's ribs, like a little extra bite, and Sam's mouth falls open in surprise at how much that really does hurt.

"I told you," Dean says, not without some satisfaction, and does it again, a little higher up.

"Fuck!" Sam says emphatically.

"Just shut the fuck up if you actually want me to do this," Dean says. "If you're looking at me with big hurt eyes, neither of us are getting the whole way through it."

Sam bites his lip and tips his face up to the ceiling and closes his eyes. The first five or six are the worst, actually, like he adjusts to it, or is clearer on what it's going to be, so it's less of a SURPRISE OUCH! Dean covers him from the bottom of his chest to just above his jeans, and Sam concentrates his attention on where he hits hard and where he's a little more careful, and then somewhere in the middle, when his chest and belly feel red and warm all the way across, he starts to get a little glimmer of an idea of how this could be good.

Not just good for Dean, either, not just good for someone who gets off on pain to the degree that Dean does, but maybe for anyone who likes it even a little. It doesn't feel good, and it still hurts like a bitch, but there is definitely something about it that's making Sam firm up in his jeans, something kind of hot and bright, and he gets a little bit of what Dean had told him once, that it makes Dean's whole skin feel awake. 

Then, toward the end again, it starts to hurt more, Sam thinks Dean is hitting places he's already hit before more, and it's less hot and bright and more a burning sting, but it's still not as bad as the first few, and it doesn't hurt enough to kill Sam's half-hard cock.

When Dean stops, Sam tips his head down, and sees that Dean is looking at him with heat in his eyes. "You took that like a pro," he says, voice dipped a little down toward husky. Dean tosses the belt onto the foot of the closest bed, and crowds up into Sam's space. "And you're all flushed. You liked it." Dean presses his hips up to Sam's, and leaves Sam in no doubt that Dean had liked it as well.

"I thought this was not supposed to be about sex," Sam says, and his own voice is tipping down to husky as well.

"That wasn't a denial, Sam," Dean says. "It ain't about sex, but it's need to know information."

Sam considers this. "I didn't hate it. It hurt like a bitch the first few times, and then it felt sting-y and bright and not good, but not terrible. Then at the end, it mostly burned, and wasn't as nice."

Dean looks like he's considering this. "Little doses work for you, though, and I bet if I warmed you up, you'd like it more."

"Warmed me up?"

"I'll explain it later. Just lemme try somethin', and we can put this fucking place behind us." Dean doesn't even ask, he just spreads both hands across the top of Sam chest and runs them both firmly all the way down. And Sam, utterly unexpectedly, arches right up into his hands and makes a sound of surprised approval. That feels good. That stings a little, like a bite does after sex, but it also feels nice, soothing. Dean doesn't stop, either, he pets Sam several times, until Sam starts to feel sort of relaxed and drowsy. "Yeah," Dean says finally, and sounds kind of smug and pleased. "Little strappin's for Sammy."

"Dude, shut up," Sam says, and straightens, flushing. 

Dean stops him with a hand on his shoulder, well clear of the red and white welts Sam can see on his chest and belly, all crisscrossed. "Hey," Dean says. "Hey, this ain't a bad thing, Sam. Don't make it one in your head."

Sam thinks about that for a second, and decides Dean is right. Being embarrassed about what either of them likes seems really counterproductive at this point, even if it's something surprising. "Okay," he says. "Okay, though I'm not sure it really works as negative reinforcement for me anymore." 

Dean smiles wryly. "We'll find something else, then. Or try your back, next time. It can be harder on your back, you might not like it at all."

"Okay," Sam says, and takes the belt when Dean hands it to him. "Okay, how hard? Can you give me a scale from yesterday, using that as ten?"

"Dial it back to a five," Dean says after a second. "I could maybe do better, but I ain't been strapped across my front in years either. I ain't sure I remember it enough for sure."

Sam moves out of the way and Dean leans against the dresser and curls his hands around the edge, elbows tipped neatly back, chin up. Sam can still see his cock, hard in his jeans, and wonders if this is going to be in any way a punishment for Dean, but figures that's not really his issue. And maybe it's more a psychological thing, anyway. Maybe it's not about whether or not his body likes it, but about knowing the why behind it that feeds that need for Dean.

That sounds about right.

Sam twists the belt around his hand and steps a little further back than Dean had to adjust for his longer reach, and doesn't give Dean any warning, because he's not above being a little petty. He starts where Dean had, the top of Dean's belly, and the biggest difference between this and yesterday is that the light is better, and he's already thinking of it as potentially sexy. When he sees the way Dean's whole chest and belly goes tight, everything taut and visible under the skin, he actually has to pause a second and do some mental gymnastics, because yes, he'd seen how maybe some day it could theoretically be hot, even yesterday, but he hadn't thought it was going to be hot _today_ , and he hadn't really factored in at all how hot Dean was going to look, during, either.

Dean tips his head to the side to look at Sam. He has both brows arched, and he's not smiling, but he's giving Sam a knowing look.

"Shut up," Sam mutters, and hits Dean again. Dean is right, it's easier to control the belt side-arm, and easier to see where he's hit before so he can see where it's still okay to hit, and Dean's belly and chest and even his biceps and his thighs tense hard at every slapping stroke of the belt. His neck flushes, and his mouth falls open, and Sam is rock solid in his jeans, and there is no question at all that in spite of everything, this is something he can and will do for Dean, something that Sam can give Dean and like doing it.

He stops at fifteen, though he doesn't actually remember how many times Dean had hit him. He'd started out counting, and isn't sure when he'd lost track, but fifteen seems about right. Then he is putting his hands all over Dean's belly and chest without being clear on how he'd crossed the space between them, and Dean is pushing right into his hands, panting and squirming a little under Sam's hands.

"You owe me five," Dean breathes, and tips forward, apparently so he can rub the expanse of his warm chest against the expanse of Sam's. Dean's skin is hot, and the welts glide up against each other and sting with friction and sweat, and yeah, it definitely feels good, good enough that Sam is willing to put up with the vaguely-almost-hot-but-still-painful length of the strapping to get to this part.

"I do not," Sam argues, and runs his thumbs down Dean's ribs in toward his chest, so Dean shivers.

"Are you sure?" Dean asks, a little wicked and a little amused. "You seemed pretty distracted, Sammy. You sure you got a good count?"

Sam makes a rumbling annoyed sound, but he pushes Dean back up against the dresser. The welts are definitely not as fierce as the ones on Dean's back had been, but there's something about them raised against the skin of Dean's belly and chest that makes them far hotter, more intimate, somehow, though Sam is willing to bet at least part of that is motivation and state of mind. But still. This looks pretty in a way that hadn't. This looks almost decorative, and as soon as Sam thinks it, he has the near-helpless urge to decorate more of Dean.

"I want to," Sam says, and stops, because he isn't even sure how to phrase the question. Dean gives him a curious look, both brows arched, but patient. "Can I try something? I mean. Just because I want to try it?"

"Yeah," Dean says easily. "Sure."

"Tip your head way up," Sam says, and hears his own voice come unsteady. "I just want to try, tell me if it's wrong."

Dean doesn't say anything to that, but points his chin straight at the ceiling. Sam sees him swallow. Sam is pretty confident of his own aim at this point, but still. He shortens the belt, happy to sacrifice some force for better aim, and then still isn't happy about the naked expanse of Dean's throat, so he covers it with his free hand. He feels Dean swallow again, Adam's apple bobbing against Sam's palm.

"Tell me if it's wrong," Sam repeats, and goes for about half as much force as he'd been exerting on the rest of Dean's chest and belly, and brings it firmly across Dean's right nipple. Dean jerks taut, his whole body, and makes a soft, hurt exclamation, but he doesn't move and he doesn't tell Sam to stop. Sam repeats it with Dean's lift nipple, and this time Dean makes a little whine, so small it's almost a mewl, and Sam slaps each nipple one more time. Dean says, "Uh!" both times, and Sam considers the last of his five blows, twists the belt a little looser and hopes for solid aim, and steps back to smack them both at once. Dean arches to his tiptoes, and shouts softly.

He lowers his head slowly when Sam moves his hand away from Dean's throat, and he's red faced and a little dazed looking, and giving Sam a look like he's been pleasantly surprised. Sam drops the belt and goes for Dean's nipples with his mouth, helpless to stop himself. Dean hooks a hand around the back of his head and makes throaty, encouraging sounds when Sam licks at them, and then harder, rougher sounds when Sam bites gently at the hard little points and the hot short welts bracketing them.

Sam disengages reluctantly, and for a few seconds they just look at each other. Sam is trying to keep in mind that this particular thing had not been meant to devolve into messy sex, and he's pretty sure Dean is thinking the same thing.

Dean sighs, eventually. "Apparently the lack of orgasms is all the negative reinforcement we're getting outta this one," he says wryly. "Live and learn." He tosses Sam his shirt and shrugs his own back on. 

Sam can feel the cotton rubbing at the welts beneath, which doesn't hurt, but he can see will probably be a little uncomfortable for a while. He glances over at Dean, who is taking deep breaths with his eyes closed. Sam can see the hard points of his nipples through his t-shirt, and guesses that must be uncomfortable right now. But Dean likes uncomfortable, so. He smiles a little.

"Shut up, Sammy," Dean says, but he's smiling a little, too. "They'll all fade in a few hours anyhow. They ain't deep."

"I'm starving," Sam says, and Dean nods his emphatic agreement.

"Lets stop on the road, though," Dean says. "First place that ain't here."

Sam is not arguing that. He hopes he never comes back here.

The first place they come to is a truck stop about ten miles out, and they both eat so much that they're faintly miserable with it afterward. They don't know where they're going, and they don't discuss it while they eat. They talk about Bobby and how much he knows, and the coven, and whether or not they will be able to help undo some of the damage, but they don't talk about the details of what happened until they are done eating, and even then, Dean only asks one question.

"What was in the dark? Was it just the demon?"

Sam thinks about how to explain the tiny corpse, the soft pale thing strung between the body and the demon that Sam is sure was that stillborn infant's blank soul, and can't think of how to explain it.

"Can we..." Sam says, and feels bad about it because he recognizes it as Dean trying to help, Dean's understanding that Sam sometimes heals things by talking them out, but he's just not ready. "Can we not, yet? Give it a week?"

"Sure, Sam," Dean says, and bumps his foot up against Sam's under the table. "When you want."


	18. 18

When they leave the truck stop, Dean stops in front of the car and says, "You drive a while." Sam, baffled, walks around the front of the car. Dean stands by the hood and takes his phone out. Sam gives him a puzzled look, but doesn't stand around and eavesdrop.

Though he would like to.

He gets in behind the wheel and watches Dean talk on the phone. He's smiling a little, but it's just habit. Dean looks at his watch, frowns, says something, and then he does smile for real, wide and happy, and glances at Sam. Sam, feeling helpless to do otherwise, smiles back. Dean talks for another minute, his face at ease, and then snaps the phone closed and circles around to the passenger side.

"Head back to Denver," he says, and doesn't look at Sam.

"Denver? Why?" Sam asks. It's several hours back to Denver, and they haven't actually slept. It's just after midnight, and Sam was thinking they'd go a hundred miles or so and then find a place to crash for another eight to ten hours. He still feels tired, and will for a few more days. He's been on hard hunts before, and he's familiar with the recovery drill, though that doesn't factor in the price to be paid for being briefly superhuman.

"Someplace I wanna go there, and we're close. I'm gonna take a nap."

Sam stares at him while Dean untangles his earbuds and turns his iPod on and settles himself in the familiar curl, head tucked into the bend of his elbow where the seat and door meet up, back to Sam. Sam had tried sleeping like that, once. The vibration had made him want to die. It's never seemed to bother Dean at all.

So, Sam drives back to Denver. It's even nice. There isn't much traffic, and there's a lot of straight, empty highway. He takes the opportunity to lay the Impala out a couple of times, listening to the low rumble of the engine build steadily into an all out roar.

The second time he does it, he glances over and sees Dean smiling, though his eyes are still closed.

Twenty miles or so outside of Denver, Dean either wakes up or stops pretending to be asleep. He looks around, blinking, and then looks at Sam and smiles sleepily. "Hey, we're almost there," he observes. "Make a pitstop, Sammy, I'm hungry again."

Sam, amused, pulls over at a truck stop, and they both eat again, not quite as much, but still a disquieting amount of food, since it hasn't been that long since their last meal. Dean dashes into the convenience store attached to the truck stop, and comes out with a cup of coffee and a Yoohoo, which he hands wordlessly to Sam, though he does make a disgusted face, as though all that suppressed verbal mockery has to escape somehow.

Dean walks around to the passenger side, and Sam fights the urge to ask if he's okay, but instead just gets behind the wheel and drives.

Sam is pulling out of the lot when Dean asks, "How much do you trust the coven?"

Sam is pulling into early morning traffic, and can't really look over, but he thinks about it as he edges in between a pickup and an SUV. When he does look, Dean is looking seriously back. "Individually, or as a whole?" Sam asks.

"Both," Dean says, eyes hooded.

"I trust them to be good, as a whole," Sam says. "Individually, I'm pretty sure I trust them as much as I trust anyone. I don't know them all well enough to be able to say that, on a personal level. I trust Chris. I trust Claire. I trust Edward."

"How much, though?" Dean wants to know.

"Why?" Sam asks suspiciously. "What did you do?"

"Nothing yet. Well, not much yet, anyhow. How much do you trust Claire? You willing to put our lives into her hands?" Dean is watching him intently. "Just her, nobody else has to know anything."

"Yes," Sam says, and he is. "What did you do?"

"Nothing yet," Dean repeats. "Gimme your phone."

Sam hands it over, intrigued.

Dean dials. After a little bit, he says, "Claire, this is Dean." Sam can hear Claire's voice, but he can't make out anything she's saying. "Yeah, I think he's okay. His dog is awesome. You should visit, if stuff goes alright between you guys. You can touch Floyd. And Godzilla, probably. You get all psychic on dogs?" Dean listens for a while. "Yeah, and Sam figured it out." Pause. Dean looks over at Sam and grins. "Yeah, he's smart. Look, I need a favor. Something quiet. Just you." Dean looks at Sam again. "Something like that. I just want it on record that it's creepy how much shit Chris knows." Dean's eyes narrow a little. "No, that wasn't his fault. Bad shit happened to us way before we ever met you guys. You tell 'im I said knock it off. We make our own calls. We still want to know what he's seeing if he's thinking it might have to do with what we do. He didn't do nothing wrong."

Dean shifts the phone to his other hand. "Yeah, both of you, then. I guess you guys are a package deal, anyways." He looks at Sam and half-smiles. "It's just one room, and it only has one door." Dean looks put upon. "Yeah, I know five would be better, but I want to be able to get out if something goes wrong. I'm not asking for a witch magna-lock here, just a little lock, and some wards for a doorbell." Dean rolls his eyes. "Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'll give you a call when we get there. Thanks." 

"She could have been sleeping," Sam says. "It's still really early."

"Pagans are up by dawn," Dean says off-handedly. "It's part of their worship."

Sam hadn't actually known that, not in any concrete sense, though it makes sense. "What are you doing?" he asks when Dean hands him back his phone.

"I'm setting us up someplace," Dean says, his expression firm, as though he expects Sam to argue it. "Just for a little while. We deserve a fucking vacation."

Sam doesn't have the slightest urge to argue. He just says, "We should get groceries, then."

Dean smiles.

***

Dean drops Sam off for the grocery shopping. "I want to get some other stuff," Dean says, when Sam complains. "I'll be back in an hour. Don't be a bitch, Sam."

Sam stands at the curb glaring after the Impala for at least a full minute after Dean takes off. His feet are cold in his flip-flops, though, and eventually he goes inside and shops, and even finds a pair of cheap deck shoes, which aren't great, but are better than flip-flops.

It's closer to an hour and a half when Dean shows back up. Sam is smoldering at having to sit on the sidewalk for half an hour with a huge pile of groceries, but Dean jumps out and opens the trunk and gives Sam such a genuinely contrite look that Sam has trouble hanging onto his ire. "I don't know where anything is," Dean says sheepishly. "I spent half the time driving around looking for the kinda store I wanted."

"What kind of store did you want?" Sam asks, and helps Dean load groceries on top of their weapons cache.

"Hardware store," Dean says, poking a yellow bag that says ACE Hardware on it with his thumb. "Just some stuff to make things secure."

"Where is this place, anyway?" Sam asks.

"It's a safe place," Dean tells him. They both climb back into the car. "You'll see."

Dean takes them to a multilevel parking lot, and then goes out of his way to tuck the Impala into the darkest, narrowest, remotest corner of it. "We gotta walk from here," Dean says.

"We have fifteen bags of groceries, Dean," Sam points out.

Dean blinks as though this had never even crossed his mind. Which, Sam thinks, it probably hadn't. When has Dean ever really had to worry about how to get the groceries from the car to the house? Even when they had stayed someplace as kids, it had never been big cities, so the house was right where you parked the car. And even then, it had been years. "Call Claire," Dean says, eventually. "Tell her to meet us here."

Dean gets out of the car and goes around to the trunk.

Sam sighs, and calls Claire. She is just mean enough to laugh at the grocery problem, but she says she and Chris will come help.

Sam gets out and watches Dean rifle curiously through the groceries while they wait. He mocks Sam's yogurt, his two percent milk, his turkey bacon, his 'roughage' and the six pack of Yoohoo. He makes happy noises at the two different kinds of imported beer -- Dean is a secret beer snob; he'll drink anything, but he loves the expensive shit -- the steaks, the six kinds of candy bars, the ham salad (Dean loves it, Sam thinks the secret ingredient is evil), and the whipped jello dessert that Dean will eat by the container.

Claire pulls up behind the Impala in a dark red Jetta. Sam and Dean look at it dubiously, but they transfer the groceries, enough weapons to make Dean comfortable, and everything else they own in three giant duffel bags. Then Sam and Dean cram themselves into the back seat. Sam's knees are practically around his chin, and every time Dean moves, he elbows Sam.

"Don't be a baby," Claire says when Sam complains. "It's only a few blocks, and I know you've been closer to Dean than that."

Dean blushes, which makes Sam feel better.

Chris turns around in the seat and opens his mouth. Dean says, "If you apologize t'me, I'm gonna give you a fat lip."

Chris blinks, and looks at Sam. "I'm sorry your brother is a jerk." 

Sam laughs and tries to fist pump, and hits Claire's roof hard enough to make his knuckles hurt, and to make Claire chew him out in truly vicious language while Dean smirks triumphantly.

It is only a few blocks, but they're apparently really popular blocks, because they circle them three times before they find a place to park on the street. Between the four of them, they manage to carry the sum total of Sam's and Dean's entire life, minus one Impala, up the block to an average looking apartment building. Dean punches a code into the keypad in front of the entryway, and lets them all in. They trudge along to the elevators and Dean hits the button for the seventh floor. They all trail along behind Dean as he leads them right from the elevator, left at the first turn, and right again after that. Eventually they're standing outside apartment 707.

"Pretty keen," Claire says thoughtfully.

"Seven hundred block of Seventh Street, seventh floor, seven-oh-seven," Chris says. "This will ward like crazy glue. The only thing easier would be doing it with the whole coven." He gives Dean a look. "Good choice."

"Do you have a key?" Sam asks.

"No," Dean says, and tries the knob. It opens under his hand. Dean grins and pushes open the door. "It wasn't my choice. This place has been here a while." He leads them inside, stepping over something. "Watch your step," he says absently.

Sam looks down, and there's a white plastic or rubber hose running across the entry. He steps over it.

It isn't huge, but it looks like it, on first glance, because there are no dividing walls. It's one big, open space. There is a corner that is a kitchen area, but there isn't even a bar separating it from the main space. There's a corner with a shower head dangling from the ceiling and a toilet, but there's nothing to separate that except a curtain, and it's pulled back. There is a big bed, three ordinary chairs scooted back against the wall, and a card table folded up next to the chairs. There are no windows.

All of this is weird.

What is really weird is that there is a devil's trap painted on every interior surface of this room. All four walls, floor, and ceiling. Huge devil's traps, almost as big as their Valkyrie catching trap.

But what is the weirdest is that it looks familiar to Sam. "Have I been here before?" he asks.

"Not this one," Dean says, and heaves two of the duffels onto the bed. "Least, if we were, I was too little to remember. But me and you been with Dad in some others. You were pretty little. Close the door," he tells Chris, who had come in last.

The closed door completes the devil's trap on that wall, and Dean looks at it with satisfaction. The door has six interior locks, and a clasp lock for a padlock. Sam sees that white tubing runs along the bottom of the wall all the way around the room, and then he notices it around both air ducts and the intake grill. "Is that salt?" he asks, gets down on one knee to look at it.

"Yeah," Dean says, and relieves Chris of a duffel. Claire puts the grocery bags she's carrying on the floor by the small refrigerator. "And to make it really secure, we gotta shore up the lines of the trap on the wall with the door. That's the only weak spot, really." He looks at Chris and Claire. "But we'll do that when you guys are on the outside."

"How did you know it was here?" Sam asks.

"Called Bobby," Dean says shortly. "Asked for the one closest to Rawlins. That woulda actually been Cheyenne, and there are two others nearly as close, but we got people here." He gestures at Claire and Chris, who seem startled to discover that they're Dean's people. Sam is not surprised at all. "And it's best Bobby don't know which one, and he knows it. That's why he gave me a list."

"What is it for?" Chris asks, following the lines of one of the devil's traps with his eyes. "It looks like a place to summon things."

Dean shrugs. "It could be. It'd be a good place for it, if you had to do it and couldn't risk whatever you were summoning getting loose, but that's not what it's for. It's a safe place, mostly for when one of us is hurt." He gestures between himself and Sam when he says 'one of us.' "Or if we're being chased by something we can't lose."

"It's a hunter safe house?" Sam asks, astonished at the idea.

"Yeah," Dean says, as though it's nothing.

"And you knew about these?" Sam demands.

"Yeah," Dean says. "I been in a few."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Dean looks puzzled. "We never needed one," he says simply, but Sam can tell by the look on Dean's face that it hadn't occurred to him that Sam didn't know. They trip on that every now and again, that period of absence during which their memories don't run parallel.

"Okay," Sam says, a sigh.

"You two," Dean says to Chris and Claire, "can't write the address down." He waves a hand. "It's one of the rules. There are other addresses, but this one is good for warding, like you said, so it's used a lot in different cities. It wouldn't be just this place that got made unsafe. Obviously, you can't tell anybody. If you ever need to use it, the door'll be open unless somebody's already inside. Unless you're dyin', find someplace else if that happens. It's one of the rules."

"Why doesn't somebody take this stuff?" Sam asks, gesturing at the furniture. None of it is spectacularly nice, but the bed, at least, is solid and in great shape.

It's Claire who answers. "The door is dim. The spell is worked into the frame. Your eye will slide right past it unless you're looking for it exactly." She walks over to a wall and lays her hands on one of the traps. "This is effective, but it's kind of rudimentary. It could be better."

Dean shrugs one shoulder. "We're hunters, not witches. Mostly. We don't always have a lot of time to do stuff the fancy way, and even if we did, we wouldn't know how. This is old enough that we all believe it, so it always works."

"Time and use has rendered it magical for all of you," Chris says, sounding impressed. "And it keeps things in or out, right?"

"Yes, but it's a different set of symbols for each. These are three of each." Sam says. "And there are other forms, some of them more intricate, but we've tried a lot of them, and this one works as well as any of the others. It only gets tricky when you start crossing theological boundaries."

Chris opens his mouth, and Dean says, "Listen, no more talking."

They all turn to look at him.

"Yeah, I'm a dick, I know. But really, I want to get us set up, lock us in, and be sure we're safe. I appreciate your help with that, but we got a limited amount of time here. That's one of the rules."

"Are you using a hunter safe house to have uninterrupted sex with your brother?" Claire asks, looking like she might start laughing at any moment. Dean's mouth drops open, and he goes bright red. He closes it without saying anything. "Oh my god, _you are_!" Claire crows in delight.

"You are?" Sam asks, and feels kind of delighted himself.

"He is," Chris says dryly.

"Seriously, it's creepy," Dean says. "Can you see in here?"

"I saw you leave here," Chris says.

Now Sam can feel himself blushing.

"That's why the wards," Dean says, with more dignity than should be possible under the circumstances. "If somebody's out there and really needs this place, I gotta know they're there."

"Aw, Dean," Claire says. She walks over to Sam and kisses his cheek. "Give that to your brother."

She looks at him expectantly until Sam actually walks over to Dean and kisses his cheek. "From Claire," he says, as though Dean hadn't been standing right here. He is almost overpowered by the urge to turn Dean's face and give him a kiss from Sam.

Dean turns and gives Sam a considering look. Then he leans in and gives Sam a long, sweet closed-mouthed kiss on the lips. "For Claire," Dean says.

Sam, feeling a little stunned, turns back toward Claire and barely catches her as she hurtles into his arms. For a second, Sam thinks of Godzilla, and how, weirdly, this too is an example of Dean's way with girls. Then Claire is pressing her lips against Sam's, carefully closed-mouthed, and Sam is supporting all of her weight with one arm under her ass and has the other around her back, and both her legs are wrapped around his waist, her arms looped around his neck. Sam isn't sure if it's exactly as long as the kiss Dean had given him, but it's close. Claire pulls back and presses her cheek against Sam's. Sam is pretty sure she's looking over his shoulder at Dean. Sam is looking over her shoulder at Chris, who is looking back calmly enough, but his eyes are sad. "Thanks," Claire says. It's not clear who she's talking to. Sam squeezes her until she squeaks.

Sam puts her down, and she kisses his cheek again. "For Sam," she says, smiling. 

Claire and Chris leave immediately afterward. Sam and Dean put the groceries away. A couple of minutes after the door closes behind the witches, Dean lifts his head right before Sam's cell phone rings.

"Tell Dean to put me into his phone," Claire says. "So I can call him the next time I'm evil." 

Dean, standing right next to Sam, is close enough to hear her. "Tell that witch not to nag me," he says loudly, smiling.

Claire makes a sound of outrage.

"I've always wanted to say that," Dean says happily.

"I'm going to ward the Impala," Claire whispers to Sam. "Don't tell him. It will drive him crazy the second he gets close to it. Try to get a picture with your phone."

Sam bites his lip to avoid laughing. "Thanks, Claire," Sam says. "Tell Chris, too. Thank you guys."

"Visit," Claire says, and hangs up on him.

Dean takes a roll of duct tape out of the Ace Hardware bag and solidifies the lines of the devil's trap that cross the door. Then he takes a brand new, very shiny padlock out of the same bag, and tears the packaging off of it. He doesn't put it on the door, though.

He puts it on the bed and walks all the way around the floor, following the line of the trap. Inspecting it. Sam gets the idea, and takes the one on the wall opposite the door. Between them, it takes several minutes to be sure every trap is tight, and Sam climbs onto a chair to look at a couple of spots on the ceiling. "This one is the oldest," he says, after he's satisfied. "It needs to be redone."

"Now?" Dean asks with a sharp look.

Sam shakes his head. "It's solid. But it's stronger if you make a new one over the old one while it's still working. Magic works in layers."

"We'll paint it when we leave." He walks over to the bed. "Come help me move it," he orders, and Sam moves to the other end. "Right in the middle of the trap," Dean directs, and they lift and carry rather than push. They both know how to avoid damaging a spell under their feet. Dean inspects the area of the trap where the bed had been hiding it, and apparently finds it acceptable. "We'll do the floor, too," Dean says absently. "We're here already."

He unfolds the card table and puts it between the bed and the door, and lines their weapons up across it like soldiers.

Then he gets a beer. He tips it in Sam's direction, and Sam nods. Dean opens a cupboard and takes out two real glass glasses, and pours them. He brings one to Sam, and then sits down on the edge of the bed. Sam sits down next to him and waits. He has a vague idea of what this is about, but that's all it is. An understanding that it's about _some_ thing, even if Sam doesn't know what.

"People," Dean says, and then pauses to take a long swallow of his beer. "The stuff we do, Sammy, people usually figure out how it works across a span of time, not all at once. It makes it easier. Like learning to shoot lets you get used to the way the gun feels in your hand and in your head. It helps to know some of what you're doing the first time you gotta actually use it. It makes it so you don't come away from it feeling like you got sucker punched." He looks sideways at Sam. "If we had other lives, I might could make it like that for you, and it'd be easier on you."

He falls silent for a few seconds. "That's how you learn to swim, too, mostly. You start out and work your way up to it. But there's other ways to do it. Sometimes getting thrown in the deep end. And this time, 'cause we don't have other lives, I think it's gotta be the deep end for you, Sammy."

Sam considers this. "Haven't I already been learning to swim?" he asks, finally.

"Only a tiny bit, baby brother. You been wading in the kiddie pool. You been learning to swim for _me_ , but I know enough to tell you how to do that, and don't take that wrong, Sammy." He smiles a little. "You're a hell of a swimmer for me. But you ain't got any real idea how to keep your own self afloat. Sam. You barely even got a look at what your water looks like on the top. You ain't ever felt it down deep, under the surface."

"And you want to teach me to swim?" Sam is a little amused, but only a little. He knows they've been operating on unequal ground, all of Dean's needs and wants right there for the asking, for the taking, and only one brief look inside Sam's own head. Dean knows more about Sam than Sam does, about this, anyway. Or Dean thinks he does, anyway, and Sam believes him. Dean has a great track record so far.

"If it was that simple, I'da been doing it all along instead of leaving you in the kiddie pool," Dean says, sounding pained. "There's a reason the deep end way is harder. It's scary, and it's not perfectly safe. I can make it as safe as it can be, and I will never let you drown, Sammy, but I gotta know that you understand that it ain't gonna be like anything you know. It's gonna be different, and sometimes you're gonna be upset and maybe scared some, and sometimes you might be kinda pissed off at me, but I can't see any other way of doing it with the way we live. Not in a safe way, and I mean safe as in our lives, not like one of us accidentally sprains something."

"So," Sam says slowly. "So something so complicated or dangerous that..."

"Don't," Dean says softly, almost sadly. "Don't think about what it might be, don't try and figure it out. I know it's hard for you to do that, Sam, but I'm asking you not to. Don't expect nothing. Don't pick a road you think goes in the direction you're headed and start down it. I'll just have to drag you back if it ain't the right road, and Sammy, I know you. I know you won't pick the right road. Not at first." 

"I thought it was letting you do stuff to me," Sam says.

"That's part of it, yeah, but, Sam. Sam, I didn't start out wanting to get the hell beat out of me. I didn't know that, and even when I started to see it, I didn't have any perspective on it. I didn't know how big it was gonna be, or how good. I didn't know how to measure it, or even that there was a way to do the measuring. People do it in steps, like you float, then you tread water, then you dog paddle, you do all that before you start working on the harder stuff, and you do it so you can _get_ to the harder stuff, because that stuff is better, but you gotta know the rest first. The big stuff is mostly awesome, but you might hate treading water, is what I'm trying to say. There could be stuff you won't like much, but it's still stuff you gotta know."

"Is it going to hurt?"

"I got no plans to cause you any kinda serious physical pain, but it might hurt other ways." Dean tips his face down and cradles his glass between his hands. "I'd do it different, if I had my pick. But this is what I got. And you can say no, if you don't wanna go there, or even if you don't wanna do it right now. But I think now is best. I got us safe as I know how, and we need this time, even if you don’t wanna go swimming. If you don't, I'll go buy us a TV, and I won't be disappointed, Sammy. I know you're raw. I know we both are. But I think this could help even that part of it." Dean pauses for a long time. Sam thinks about what he might say to that, but comes up with a lot of nothing, so it's a relief when Dean starts to talk again. "I think knowing some of this'll be hard for you. But I think what you're gonna get in return is gonna be worth it. I wanna give it to you. I been wanting to a while. I want to give you something. And I want you tell me you want it without knowing exactly what it is."

Sam blinks, and Dean turns his head to look at Sam. His face is very serious.

"Can I ask questions about it?" Sam asks tentatively.

"Sure," Dean says. "But some I won't answer."

"What will you answer?" Sam asks.

Dean's eyebrows rise a little. "Pretty crafty," he says, smiling faintly. "But if you're a pain in the ass, I won't answer anything."

Sam snorts. "Why are you worried?" he asks, finally. Because that's the real question. Sam is only nervous because Dean is unsettled.

Dean gives him a long look. "Because sometimes people ain't happy when they find out what it is they want." 

"Were you unhappy?" Sam asks, and knows the answer.

"Yeah," Dean says, without hesitation. "I was freaked right the fuck out. And it only kinda worked for me a couple of times, before you. Not the pain, that always worked, but the," and Dean does hesitate here, "the punishment, that. It came out of nowhere, I didn't see it coming at all, and when I worked it out, I could never really get there again, and that was my own doing. I was still young enough and proud enough that I couldn't just ask right out for what I needed. I didn't know how to do that and not have it feel bad to me, in my head."

"It's penance," Sam says. He's calm, now. If Dean is worrying about him, Sam doesn't feel much need to worry for himself. And Sam doesn't have that kneejerk urge to shove any emotion he doesn't understand as far down as possible.

"What?" Dean asks, chin coming up.

"It's penance that you want, not punishment." Dean opens his mouth, says nothing, and then closes it. He looks at Sam. "It's not the same," Sam says.

"No," Dean says slowly. "I know it's not." He's still looking at Sam. "When did you hit on that?"

"Before we left Denver, before we went to Rawlins."

"Were you going to tell me at some point?" Dean asks mildly.

"You know," Sam says. "You knew. You just haven't managed to change the way you think about it, yet."

Dean doesn't deny it, though he doesn't agree aloud either. He takes a drink of his beer and cradles the glass between his hands again.

"Would you have been happy if you had known that, if you hadn't ever thought it was punishment?" Sam asks.

"I dunno," Dean says. "Hard to say. It might of worked better, but I might of just ignored it. It ain't the same." Which is as close as Dean can probably come to saying that needing penance feels like more of a weakness to him than needing punishment.

"You are an excellent repressor," Sam says.

"Everybody gotta have a skill, Sammy." Dean's lips are curled up at the corners. "Comes down to this, though," Dean says, and turns his whole body toward Sam. "What are you willing to bet that I'm not gonna fuck this up? I got a plan, and I know what I'm doin', but you're gonna have to trust me on that. And you're gonna have to decide to keep trusting me, sometimes, Sam, as we go, you're gonna have to do it even when you can't see why I'm doing stuff. Are you willing to do that?"

"Yes," Sam says immediately. Dean draws back a little, as though surprised. "Always," Sam adds.

Dean says nothing, but he leans forward and kisses Sam once, hard. Then he stands up and takes a twist of paper out of his pocket. He untwists it and holds it down where Sam can see it. It's a small white pill, a little crushed up and powdery from being in Dean's pocket. Dean moves the twist of paper over Sam's beer and tips the contents deliberately into it. Sam watches it sink and start to dissolve. Sam looks up at Dean. Dean looks back intently.

This is the actual part where Sam bets, he understands. That part had not been a metaphor in the slightest.

Sam drinks his beer.

Dean closes his eyes briefly, then picks up the giant padlock and puts it on the door. He shows Sam the little ring with three keys dangling from it, and puts one under the bottom edge of the refrigerator, one in the back of the toilet tank, and tucks one into the change pocket of his jeans.

Sam can't even taste whatever Dean gave him. There's some of it lying at the bottom of the glass, sifting like silt, so Sam swirls it around. He tastes it a little at the end, something more bitter than beer. As soon as Sam puts the empty glass on the table, Dean hands Sam his own. Sam takes a drink to kill the bitter taste and hands it back to Dean.

"It's safe," Dean says.

"I know," Sam says, and he does. Not only would Dean never give Sam a street drug, but he would never even go so far as to give Sam a drug he had never taken before unless Sam was already dying. But the fact that he is about to be incapacitated for an unknown amount of time is not an easy one. He picks up the twist of paper off the table. "This is why here?"

"Part of why," Dean says. "I'll tell you the rest later."

At this point, it's too late to worry about it. "How long?"

"Depends on how tired you are when you take it," Dean says, and gives Sam a measuring glance. "Ten or fifteen minutes."

Sam drove all the way back to Denver on a wink and a promise, which had been Dean's diabolical plan all along, of course.

"You should go to the bathroom now, if you need to," Dean adds.

Sam does, and takes the time to brush his teeth with his new toothbrush, just to get the lingering bitterness off the back of his tongue.

When he sits back down on the bed, Dean sits down right beside him.

"When you wake up," Dean tells him, his voice low, tone deliberately soothing, "try not to freak out. I'm going to be right here, I will never leave you alone, but it may be dark by then."

"There are no windows in this room," Sam points out, and he can already tell by his voice that whatever it is is hitting him. He sounds a little slurry.

"No, but you're gonna be out for a little while, and I have to sleep sometime, too."

"Are you going to blindfold me?" Sam asks suspiciously.

Dean huffs out a little laugh. "D'you want me to?"

"I have no idea," Sam says. "Maybe?"

"We can make a list," Dean tells him. "Lets get your shoes off, Sammy."

Sam cooperates with getting himself undressed down to his jeans, and would have started on them, except Dean puts out a hand and tips him onto the bed. A moment later, Dean appears above him. "You could never do that if you didn't roofie me," Sam says.

Dean smiles down at him. "I didn't roofie you," he says.

"Semantics," Sam says. "My brother roofied me."

"I don't think it counts as being roofied if you take it on purpose," Dean tells him, and kisses Sam's mouth softly.

Sam sighs and says, "The story will be funnier if I can say you roofied me."

Dean pushes Sam's bangs out of his eyes. "Who're you gonna tell this story to, Sammy?" he asks indulgently.

"Claire," Sam lies.

Dean's scandalized face is even funnier while roofied, apparently.

"Still with me?" Dean asks, when Sam stops laughing.

"Yeah," Sam says. He is pressingly exhausted and he is drugged. Or because he's drugged.

"Is there anything you can think of that you hate, Sam? Something you don't want to happen no matter what?" 

"If you tickle me, I will kill you in your sleep," Sam says.

Dean kisses Sam's mouth again, and then what feels like Sam's eyebrow. "I promise, no tickling," Dean says. "Anything else?"

Sam thinks about it. "Nothing I hate. Some stuff I don't know." Sam's eyelids each weigh a metric ton. He can see Dean a little, though, just a slice of his face, the curl of his mouth.

"Anything you love?" Dean asks.

"I love you," Sam says.

"I know, Sam, that's not what I meant." Dean's lips land on Sam's eyebrow again.

"I know what you meant," Sam says. "I'm roofied, not stupid."

"My mistake," Dean says, but his voice sounds like it's smiling.

Sam lets his eyes slip the rest of the way closed. His brain feels like it's wrapped in cotton, but he isn't afraid. It could be the drug, but Sam doesn't think so.

"Are you sleepin', Sammy?" Dean murmurs a little bit later.

"It is _not_ time to get up," Sam objects blurrily.

"No, you're right. Not time to get up," Dean soothes.

Dean's hands sweep warm swathes down Sam's chest, and Sam turns into him. Dean curls around him, warm and smelling like the world is supposed to smell.

"Dean," Sam says.

"Right here," Dean tells him.

"Why?" Sam asks.

"So you'll remember it right," Dean whispers.

"Dean," Sam says.

"Still here, Sammy."

"Dean."

"I got you, Sam."


	19. 19

Sam doesn't wake up all at once, but slides and staggers toward consciousness, distantly aware that he's moving a little, his brain blurrily tells him they must be driving. It's dark, and he feels like he's sitting up and lying down at once, and he gropes for some sense, moving to swipe a hand across his face because it's so dark he can't see anything. His hand moves a little, and jerks to a stop. For a long moment, Sam is merely puzzled. He tugs his recalcitrant hand toward him. It doesn't move.

"Dean?" he says, because that is what he does when he doesn't know what to do. His voice sounds a little raspy, he's kind of thirsty, he's groggy and his hand doesn't work.

"Right here," Dean says from right behind Sam, and Sam's memory crashes back into place all at once, an orderly little explosion of context.

He tries to sit fully up, and can't. His arms are spread out and he can feel something smooth and kind of cool around his wrists, and tight panic closes around his ribs. "Dean!" he says, and flexes his whole body, hears clinking, a scrape of metal, something creaking. He turns his head to look at Dean, and can't really do that either. There's something around his neck, not tight, but ungiving, that goes all the way up to his chin and he can feel it high up at the back of his neck, too. Sam's brain goes sharp and bright with fear, and Dean's hand slides into Sam's hair.

"Don't freak out yet," Dean says, low and calm. "You can freak out in a minute, and that's okay, but not yet."

"Dean!" Sam says, high and breathless, and Dean's hand slides out of his hair and around to cover his mouth. Dean leans forward, and Sam's eyes widen, abruptly aware that Dean is pressed all along his back, but more than that, that Dean is, he is inside Sam, his cock is pushed up all the way into Sam's ass, he can feel it when Dean moves, and he can't even accept that, he doesn't know how to even think it, is reeling and stupid with disbelief. 

"Just one minute," Dean says in Sam's ear, breath hot against the side of Sam's face. "Stay with me for one minute, Sam. Nod your head so I know you understand." Sam doesn't for a few seconds. He feels like he has been hit very hard, so hard he's on the ground and everything has turned abruptly sideways and he can't recognize any of it. "Nod your head, Sam," Dean repeats patiently, and Sam is, Sam does, though he can't even do that very much. "Good," Dean says. "There's something in your right hand. Do you feel it?"

Sam closes his right hand, and he does. A solid cylinder. He nods.

"Good, Sammy," Dean murmurs. "It's strapped to your hand. You can't drop it. There a button on top. Push it."

Sam finds it easily, pushes. A sharp, loud peal of sound pierces the darkness, and Sam jerks back from it, can't, can't move at all, and makes a distressed sound behind Dean's hand.

"Shh," Dean says. "That's your panic button, Sam. If you have to stop or you're in real trouble, you push the button. You understand?"

Sam jerks at his hands again and tries and fails to lift his head, trying to free his mouth.

"Don't," Dean growls into his ear. Sam shudders. "Nod your head so I know you understand your button, Sam."

Numbly, Sam nods.

"Good," Dean says again. "Don't think about it again unless you need it. When I uncover your mouth, I'm gonna tell you two true things. You're going to freak, you're going to be confused, and anything you want to do about it is okay, Sam. I'm right here. You understand?" 

Sam nods.

Dean's hand slides away from Sam's face.

Sam hitches in a breath that feels abbreviated, and another, and he doesn't even know what he wants to say. "Dean," he says, voice thick and small.

"This is true," Dean says into Sam's ear, quietly taut. "You are completely helpless. I did this to you. You can't do anything about it at all. You're helpless. You can't stop me."

Sam can hear his heartbeat in his ears, his head feels full of static. "You," he says, "Dean, you..." He doesn't even know what he's trying to say, is totally overwhelmed at his own essential vulnerability, that he can't be helpless, it isn't safe, if he, what if he... He jerks at his hands again, he can't even turn his head, and his knees are up under him, he can feel, he knows, but he can't push up, he can't move, he is trapped, he can't, he can't...

And then he is fighting it, whole body, jerking as hard as he knows how, drawing his arms in, throwing his head back, he knows he is freaking out, he can feel Dean behind him, solid, there, he knows he is safe, Dean is here and he is safe, but Sam can't help it. There is no way, it's just not, it can't, there is a way or a weakness, Sam can find it, he has to, he always has to, it's always his job to find the way, and he tries, he pulls and jerks and flexes and just throws himself back, away, he does it again and again, and he only stops because he has to, when he is too tired to pull anymore, and his body is trembling and exhausted.

Dean touches the side of his face, and then does something to Sam's hands, holds each one between both of his own.

Sam breathes hard. Drying sweat is prickling at his skin, and his hair is in his eyes. He can't push it away, he can't shake it back. He's shaking, and thinks he might cry.

"Now you're tired," Dean says, right in Sam's ear again. "And you're still helpless."

Sam jerks hard again, once, and shouts out a wordless negative.

"Yes," Dean says simply. Sam sags, suddenly strengthless. There's something soft in front of him. Dean presses him gently forward against it, and Sam can't stop him.

He is still shaking, and he still thinks he might cry, but he's almost calm.

Dean strokes a hand down Sam's ribs and around his belly and gathers up Sam's cock, which is hot and hard. Dean only holds it for a moment. Long enough that Sam is aware.

A weird tangle of sound forces it's way out of Sam's throat, low and wet and helpless.

"Sammy," Dean breathes against Sam's shoulder. "Sam." He pulls back a little, and rocks forward slowly, pushing his cock into Sam. It burns a little, Sam is sore. He doesn't know from what. "This is true, Sam," he murmurs, voice gone low and hot. "You'll always remember that the first time I fucked you, the first time I opened you up and pushed my cock into you, you were unconscious."

Sam stiffens, his whole body tightens, muscles bunching, and his mouth falls open in surprise. He doesn't move, doesn't speak. He just shudders where he is, mind wiped clean with shock.

"You couldn't stop me," Dean continues relentlessly, and rocks into Sam again, gently. "You didn't even know. I spread you open and got you wet and you were sweet, Sammy, tight and so hot and completely fucking helpless, and I did this to you. I took you like that, Sam, I used you like that, you will always know that." 

Sam makes a choked sound. He knows it was him, he can feel more of it waiting in his throat, but he doesn't know what it is, what it means. He feels it when the tears escape his eyes and slide down his face, but he doesn't know what that is either. He doesn't know what anything is. He feels blank. 

Dean brushes Sam's bangs away from his face, tucks some hair behind his ear, then settles his hand on Sam's hip. He shifts forward. Whatever Sam's chest is pressed against is yielding, like Sam is upright against a bed, and Dean presses him further into it. Sam can feel Dean's thighs bunching against the insides of Sam's thighs right before Dean really thrusts. "That's forever," Dean whispers, lips brushing Sam's ear, and pushes his cock up into Sam. "Every other time, you're gonna think of this, what it feels like to wake up and know I did this to you, had you, used your body just like I wanted, never asked you for it, just took it."

Dean's breathing harshly against the side of Sam's face, his hips snapping, driving his cock into Sam, and Sam is, he is helpless, he is making wrenching little sounds, Dean has to hear them but Dean is not stopping, and Sam can't stop him, he is just, just...

His brain feels like the sound the Impala's engine makes when it's trying to turn over, and can't quite make it.

"It was good, Sam," Dean tells him, his voice a low grinding sound at Sam's ear. "I loved it, I love this, right now, with you so turned around you can't even think, taking my cock because you can't stop me, while you don't even know that you need it yet, and I'm doing it anyway, you can't do a thing about it. I love that I know you're sore already and you don't know why. I loved it when you fought me, too. I have never had that, like that, you really fighting me with my cock inside you, Sammy, that was so fucking good, you can do that, Sam, you can do anything, you don't have to do anything, you can't stop me, you don't have to be anything else. I'm not gonna stop, I'm gonna do whatever I want, I'm not gonna ask, I'm just going to take it, you don't have to be anything for me, Sam, you can just be."

Sam's whole body goes hot, like those are magic words. He bows back, helpless, and feels the pull at his wrists and his throat and his thighs, Dean hard behind him, unyielding, Dean's hand on his hip, his arm locked around Sam's chest, his cock hot, stretching Sam hard around it, open, all of it holding him up, none of Sam contributing, it isn't that, it isn't...

Sam can't see, he can't breathe, he is jerking, Dean is close along his back, a fixed point of reference, Sam's throat hurts and he is so hot, Dean is saying something Sam can't understand, he is helpless with the sounds coming from him, from _Sam_ , and his face is wet. Dean's grip on his hip is hurting, and Sam can't breathe, can't care while Dean pushes him hard and open, Dean's cock is wet inside him, and then wetter, Dean groaning in his ear, and then Sam is coming and screaming, his whole body, his mind all splintered, wet with Dean, held together from the outside.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, Sam becomes aware that Dean is licking the back of his neck under Sam's hair, is doing it in long, careful swipes, like he really wants to, like he's been thinking about what Sam's skin tastes like there, when his hair is all damp with sweat.

It takes him a minute to realize that that means whatever had been around his neck is no longer there, and that he is face down in what feels like a pillow.

He lifts his head. Dean merely shifts so that he's licking the side of Sam's neck instead.

"I..." Sam says croakily, before he realizes that he doesn't know what to say.

Dean leans away from Sam, leaving the line of his back cool. Then he is back, and says, "I got a glass with a straw here. Close your eyes in case I also got bad aim."

Sam closes his eyes. The tip of the straw bumps against Sam's cheek, but then settles against his lips. Sam drinks gratefully. It's Yoohoo, room temperature. It goes a long way toward easing the raw feeling in Sam's throat. When he stops drinking, Dean makes it go away again.

"You'd be doing us both a favor if you could shut up and let it happen," Dean tells him gently.

"I..." Sam says, trying to think about it, and failing wildly. "I don't think I can." He really doesn't.

"Yeah," Dean says. He sounds faintly amused. "You never could. Even when you were a little kid. You never really told me no. You just always had to know why."

"I'm not sure what just happened," Sam whispers, and Christ, is that ever an understatement. He isn't sure he can even remember all of what just happened.

"I know," Dean says, and kisses the back of Sam's head. "You gotta process. It's okay. You will before we're done."

"When will we be done?" Sam asks.

Dean doesn't say anything.

"Can I get up?" Sam tries.

Dean is silent.

Sam pulls at his wrists, and gets a small clink. He twists his left hand down and feels squared off metal somewhat below his hands, which makes this the head of the bed. Whatever he's sort of draped over is too firm to be pillows, though what's directly under his chin is definitely a pillow. He gets a grip on the headboard, tentative, because he can't actually do anything but hook his fingertips around the edge, and rattles it a little.

"If you're a bitch about it, I'll make it worse," Dean says matter of factly. 

Sam opens his mouth and then closes it again.

His right hand is curled around his button. There are dents in it, places to rest your fingers. Like a handlebar grip.

"Can the lights be on?" Sam asks.

Dean runs his hands up Sam's ribs all the way to his armpits. He pauses, and tugs gently at the hair there. "Are you hungry?" Dean asks.

Sam isn't. "No," he says, and is surprised at how his voice comes out, small and scared.

Dean's hands land on his shoulders and slide firmly all the way up to Sam's forearms, bracketing Sam's arms warmly. Dean's whole body is stretched out along Sam's, curled over it, like Dean is sheltering him.

Dean isn't squashing him, but Sam can still barely breathe.

"What...?" Sam says. "Why...?"

"You'll get it, I promise."

"Tell me," Sam says.

"No," Dean says.

Sam shudders. "What happened, during. While." He can't decide what word to use.

Dean puts his lips against Sam's ear and whispers, "I will never tell you that."

Sam hitches in an unsteady breath, exhales again, is thinking about what else to ask, and unexpectedly bursts into tears. Not quiet, probably unnoticed tears, either, but harsh, choking noises that Sam absolutely can't squelch, and he finds that part, the inability to quiet it, more upsetting and alarming than the tears themselves.

Dean doesn't move, he stays exactly where he is, a warm weight, unwavering. Sam wonders hysterically if this counts as something Dean wants, to lay on top of his brother while he's having a breakdown, and Dean says, "It's okay to be confused. It's okay to be whatever you are," which inexplicably makes it worse.

It's almost a relief when Dean pulls back after nearly a minute of the wretched sound Sam is making, and Sam thinks he might be able to calm down without the unquestioning curve of Dean's body above him, and then Dean's hand slides along his ass and a second later the slick head of Dean's cock slides up beneath it and bumps against Sam's hole.

Sam makes a choked sound of disbelief that might be indistinguishable from the other noises he's making, Sam doesn't know. If Dean recognizes it, he ignores it. He pushes into Sam all at once, no hesitation, and it burns a little but doesn't really hurt because Sam is still open and wet from Dean, from Dean, from _Dean fucking Sam open while he was unconscious_.

Sam feels a brief knot of something like agony in his chest, some emotion that is all angles, and shoves his face into the pillow to muffle it, but Dean's hand tangles into his hair almost immediately and pulls his head back, and Sam shouts at him, still crying, not words but just yelling, just noise, and he can't stop it. It's worse, he's still crying anyway, and he doesn't know _why_ he's doing any of it, and Dean is riding Sam though it, holding Sam's head back and fucking Sam so hard that even with all the lube and the come Sam can really feel it, and another sharp explosion happens in Sam's chest, and all the noise he's making becomes, "No!" screamed out at the top of Sam's voice without Sam even knowing he is going to do it.

"Yes," Dean growls immediately, and doesn't stop at all, doesn't even hesitate, and Sam opens his mouth, and Dean says, "You yell if you gotta, Sam. It's okay. Whatever you do, it's okay."

Sam sucks in a breath. He feels like he is balanced on a tightrope, like he might fall. He sucks in another breath.

"Dean," he gasps. His voice sounds like a crack.

"Right here," Dean says firmly, and Sam is aware, all at once, without any kind of warning, of the feel of Dean's thighs bunching as he pushes into Sam, the slick slide of Dean's sweaty chest against Sam's back, the rough roll of Dean's breathing, and then the way Sam is straining, the thick press of Dean inside him, how hot his cock is, how much Sam wants it, how good, how Dean is riding along his prostate with every stroke, how it has to be deliberate, how Dean is holding Sam back against him, how he can't move, can't stop, can't control, how they are slotted together, how Sam is helpless against Dean, how Sam is helpless for Dean. 

"Dean," he gasps again, and now he sounds frantic, and he is, God, he is, he needs, he can't move, he wants so much, and Dean's cock drags along his prostate and Sam yelps out a startled cry of pleasure and Dean groans.

"Sam," Dean says thickly, and pulls Sam's hair roughly to make a space for him to kiss Sam's neck. "Sam."

"Dean," Sam pants out, high and scared, "Dean, you, will you, can, you have to!" He doesn't know what he's saying, and he doesn't care, it's not important, he feels it again, that wide torn open feel of being pulled apart, held safe inside himself from outside his own skin.

"Yeah, Sammy," Dean whispers, like he doesn't need to know any more than that, and he pushes harder, opens Sam so hard with his cock, and Dean's hand closes around Sam's cock and Sam yells out something, and he can't even twist into it or away, he doesn't know what he wants to even do and he is broken, he is broken in his mind and his body isn't his, and he can hear himself whining something out, actual words this time, but he can't really hear himself.

Dean stops, he pauses with his cock so deeply buried in Sam that Sam feels pulled apart by it, and says, "Say it again, Sammy, tell me," and Sam feels Dean's fingertips drilling into his hips and that's good, so good to have Dean holding him where Sam can't feel anything else keeping him down and still and he doesn't know what Dean wants him to say, he can't remember, but when he opens his mouth to tell Dean that, other words come out instead.

"I can't, I," he rasps, "I can't, you, you have to, you, I can't..."

"It has to be me, first?" Dean murmurs, warm against Sam's cheek, and a deep pulse of need clenches through Sam, his whole body alight with it, his cock and his brain, pinned open like his body is pinned, and he makes a gulping needy sound that he can't even believe came from his own throat. "You gotta feel me come first, Sam? Tell me."

And Sam would tell him, feels totally compelled by Dean's voice, but Dean doesn't make him. Dean just shifts up, does something Sam can't tell, but it pulls Sam open more, it makes him want to howl but he only whines, and Dean wraps his hands around both of Sam's shoulders and shoves at Sam, shoves in, shoves him open, doesn't stop, doesn't seem to notice that Sam isn't breathing, can't breath, his whole chest is on fire, there are white pulses of light at the edges of the darkness in front of his wide open eyes. Dean is making rough, hard noises, Dean's hand clenches in his hair and pushes Sam's face down into the pillow, and Dean groans, it's loud, so loud when Sam can't hear himself at all. Dean's hips jerk, in, in Sam, Dean has Sam, and Sam knows the second Dean comes, the hot frictionless wet feel of it, the shuddering of Dean's body, the sound Dean makes, the low, rasping grunt of satisfaction. Sam wants he shivers and shivers and he wants, and Dean's hand curls around Sam's cock and he comes so hard that he wails, helpless and grateful, mind white and empty, whole body bowed against, within, his restraints.


	20. 20

He thinks he blacks out for a minute, or maybe goes to sleep. The next thing he really knows is that Dean isn't behind him, and he's covered with something, a fluffy blanket. His whole body feels like unformed clay, like he may never be solid enough to move again. He is a little sore, can feel the pull of exertion in his muscles, but it's not important. It's not pain, it's just information. His ass is a little more sore than that, but it's good. It feels good, like he's supposed to feel like that.

"Sam," Dean says from right in front of him.

Sam lifts his head. "I got a drink for you," Dean tells him. Sam closes his eyes and feels the straw bumping against his mouth. It's juice this time, and Sam is so thirsty he drinks it all the way down until his straw is making little slurping sounds against the bottom of the glass. Dean chuckles a little, and makes the glass go away. "Be still a minute," he says, and Sam feels a warm, rough washcloth scrubbing at his face.

"My eyelashes are sticky," he tells Dean, his voice all velvet over broken glass.

"Which eye?" Dean ask patiently.

Sam is dismayed to find that he has to actually think about the answer to that question. "Right," he says finally, and Dean scrubs at his right eye until Sam's eyelashes feel okay again.

Then Dean leans in and kisses Sam, sweet and undemanding, and Sam lets himself be kissed without feeling any real need to do anything in response.

"I get it," Sam says, when Dean pulls away. "I get it."

Dean touches his hair. "No, you don't," he says, sounding certain.

Sam blinks. He's not sure it could be more obvious. "It's a control thing," he says.

"Sure," Dean says, and dips to kiss him again. "Sure, that's a thing for you, Sammy. But it ain't the whole thing."

"It's not?" And Sam is confused, yes, and a little dismayed, but mostly just confused.

"You ever," Dean says, and then Dean's hands are on his face, tipping his head up. Sam thinks he's going to get more kisses, but instead he gets something wrapped gently around his throat. He recognizes the wide, stiff feel of it, and goes still. His brain says: No, absolutely not. His body says: Okay. Sure. He can feel Dean doing something in the back, buckles he thinks. "You ever have a fantasy," Dean continues, while he tugs at the collar, tucks a finger under Sam's chin to check the fit. "One that you think will be the hottest thing ever to happen to you, and then you get it, one day, it actually happens, and it's just not that awesome?"

"Girl and a guy," Sam's mouth spills out without direction from Sam's brain. "At once."

Dean chuckles and swipes his tongue along Sam's mouth. "This is like that, in reverse," he says. "Was it the hottest thing to ever happen to you, Sam?" Dean's voice is dusky when he says it. Sam finds himself nodding before he realizes that he can't really nod much in the collar, and also it's too dark for Dean to see it.

"Yeah," Sam says.

"Yeah," Dean says, and wipes his thumb along the slickness his tongue had left on Sam's mouth. "So your brain thinks this has gotta be it. Your body thinks so, too. But it's not. It's just the first thing that's so good you can't think of better." 

Sam considers this. The idea feels gigantic in his brain, but he can't really consider the implications. He's too wrecked to think about it, too sex drugged.

"What's," Sam says, and then has to lick his lips to continue. "What's on my neck?"

"It's a collar," Dean says unhelpfully.

Sam rolls his eyes in the dark. "Yes, thank you, I can tell it's a collar, Dean," he says. "I meant, I mean. It feels like a neck brace, only stiffer. What is it?"

"I thought you didn't want to know this stuff," Dean says, but his tone is dusky again.

Sam's throat clicks when he swallows.

"It's a posture collar," Dean says, and then fits his hand around the front of it with just enough pressure that Sam can feel it.

Dean lets go, and a few seconds later there is a flash of light bright and unexpected enough that Sam flinches back, disoriented. Then Dean is holding something up in front of his face, and it's Sam's phone. Framed in the front screen is a picture of the collar. Sam can see his own chin, tipped a little up by the edge of the collar, but he's looking at the collar itself mostly. It's taller than he expected, it's black and lined with something red inside, Sam can feel that, something soft like satin.

Something hot rolls over in Sam's belly. His cock is too sated to really respond, but the rest of him shivers a little.

"You look pretty in it, Sam," Dean tells him.

"Pretty," Sam repeats, not because he isn't sure of the word, but because this is not the first time he's heard Dean use it in relation to Sam. "You think I'm pretty." He sounds amazed to himself.

"Sammy," Dean says, right in front of Sam's face suddenly, so close Sam can feel Dean's breath brushing at Sam's mouth. "I've thought you were the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen for years and years now."

Sam's brain staggers at that admission, the way Dean says it, like it's so obvious it doesn't need saying, like it doesn't mean that Dean had been looking and Sam and thinking "pretty" since Sam was still just a teenager. That hot thing in Sam's belly rolls over and grows sharp little spines. 

Sam sighs out an odd little sound, and Dean kisses him again, faint brush of lips. Then, right up against Sam's mouth, he says, "I'm gonna turn you over, Sam. You fight me if you can't help it, it's okay."

Sam has no idea why that makes him shudder, and he has no intention whatsoever of fighting Dean right up until the time Dean is pulling pillows and what Sam thinks are probably a couple of their duffel bags out from in front of Sam. Then he feels the cool bar of metal against his chest, the headboard of the bed, and the fact that he's tied down to the bed skitters across the front of his brain, and as soon as Dean does something that gives him control over his right hand, Sam is pulling back and out, trying to keep that hand free.

He hears Dean move, almost silently, and Sam reaches for his left hand with his right, but he only gets about two seconds of his fingertips dancing along leather and metal before Dean does something that hooks his right hand down right next to his left, and Sam is abruptly immobile again, this time leaning to the left hard enough that his whole body is straining in that direction. Dean skids the palm of one hand along the taut right side of his body.

"Go on," Dean says, and Sam doesn't know what he's talking about, and then he does. He lets the fingers of his right hand slide over the band of leather around his left wrist. It's four inches wide, give or take, and Sam can't feel a buckle or a clasp, though there is definitely some kind of metal every inch or so around it. There's a long line of something slim, not leather, rope maybe, but thin rope, running through one of those. It's attached to the headboard somehow, but it goes down further than Sam can reach. There's something there, something that keeps Sam's arm up rather than letting it slide down, but he can't tell what it is. There's no button or anything else he can feel that might be a release.

"Your legs are gonna be more complicated," Dean tells him. "I've got you trussed up pretty tight. If you can manage, you're better off not fighting. If you knee me in the face and knock me out, you're gonna be pretty fuckin' uncomfortable for a while."

Sam has no plans on any fighting whatsoever.

Then Dean does something that definitely gives Sam some room to move, though he still can't straighten his legs, and he is bucking up against Dean's hands whether he likes it or not, and he _is_ stronger than Dean, and he thinks he might even buck free until Dean wraps a hand around his cock and squeezes hard. Sam doesn't yell, though he's only about half hard, so it hurts a lot, it really _really_ fucking hurts, but he does go limp all over, and Dean wrestles him over onto his back and this time Sam is at least aware that Dean has something, a belt or something like it, slung low across Sam's hips. He feels it when Dean gets it tight, hooked onto the bed frame, too, Sam guesses. His cock settles across it where it rests on Sam's belly. Sam's knees are still drawn up and bent.

Dean unhooks his right hand and moves it to where his left hand had been. Sam doesn't resist. Dean nudges at the button in Sam's right hand, and Sam closes his hand around it. Dean just pushes at something around the back of Sam's hand, probably whatever is holding the button in place. It feel elastic-y, but thick, and not constrictive like elastic is. Rubbery, maybe. Weird.

Dean muscles him a little upright and shoves several pillows under his back, which is at least marginally comfortable. If Sam could straighten his knees, he might be okay like this for a while. Dean, as though reading his mind, does something to his left leg -- Sam hears a little clicking ratchet, like a lock -- and tugs Sam's leg out straight. He attaches it to something, presumably the foot board. He does the same with Sam's right leg.

Sam arches his back and stretches a little, and settles.

"May I have another pillow?" he asks. 

Dean comes up to the head of the bed. "Where you want it?"

"Right behind my head."

Dean squishes it into position, then kisses the top of Sam's head.

"You did good," he says.

"I tried to escape," Sam points out, feeling bad about it, feeling guilty.

"No you didn't," Dean says soothingly. "Are you hungry?"

Sam still isn't. "No."

Dean is silent for a few seconds. "Next time I ask, I'm gonna insist," he finally says.

"How long..." Sam gropes for the right words, and finally says, "...since we got here?"

"About eight hours," Dean tells him. Then he settles himself neatly in between Sam's spread legs and licks the side of Sam's knee. Sam starts a little, mostly surprise, but Dean just rests a hand on Sam's thigh and continues on with licking Sam's knee. Dean licks all the way up to the middle of Sam's thigh and that's how Sam knows there's a strap there. He feels the way Dean's tongue trips over it, and once he knows that, he can feel them, two around each thigh, one around each calf right below the knee, something wider around each ankle. Dean doesn't mention it, just switches legs and starts at the other knee. He's really conscientious about it, too, doesn't miss any noticeable expanse of skin. When he finishes, he switches to the top of Sam's thigh and licks all the way up to Sam's hipbone, both sides, like he's painting a fence, or like he's just mapping Sam out with his tongue and is making sure he doesn't miss anything. Any time Sam shifts or shivers, Dean pauses and investigates that patch of skin with slick, wet stokes, as though he's kissing secrets from them. Sam wishes he could see it. With the exception of Sam's cock, Sam has never seen Dean's tongue on his skin.

He skips over Sam's cock entirely, which is sad, as Sam is hard, all his skin quivering under the wet warmth of Dean's tongue, but licks across Sam's belly and ribs with broad, even strokes, then Sam's nipples with quick little licks that make Sam shiver, and Dean does that for what feels like ages, little licks, broad swipes, just the tiniest scrape of his teeth, until Sam's breath is coming high and tight and he's moving as much as he can, a restless, full-body writhing that he can't see, he knows he's doing it but he can't _see_ it, so he doesn't try to stop.

Dean spends a lot of time on the spell, traces every line of it, every rune, and it's almost entirely healed over, so it doesn't hurt, it just makes Sam ache in the pit of his belly, like Dean is licking _under_ his skin there, like that skin doesn't even exist for Dean. He wonders if Dean can feel the lines of the magic, if it itches at Dean's tongue. Then Dean is licking at Sam's armpit, and Sam startles again.

Dean pauses. "Tickle?" he asks.

"No," Sam says, because it doesn't, but he startles again when Dean presses his tongue against the skin there, skin almost no one but Sam ever touches, and he has no idea why, but it's insanely good. Sam wriggles and shivers a little, helpless to stop it. Dean makes a low sound of satisfaction, and that only makes it worse. Sam's cock is aching by the time Dean switches to his other armpit, and Sam can't move in any way that is helpful, but he's still holding his arm as far out as he can. Dean smiles, Sam can feel the curl of his lips, and then he bites Sam gently along the place where his armpit becomes his chest, and Sam's hips stutter, or would stutter, but they press up against the band of leather instead and Sam hitches in a breath and arches his back until Dean licks him again.

Dean bites at Sam's chest again when he finishes, and Sam's desperately hard, wishes he could roll on his side and shove his cock into the warmth of Dean's hip.

"Hey," Sam says breathlessly. "Hey."

Dean reaches down in the dark and unerringly closes a hand around Sam's cock.

Sam inhales and opens his mouth, and Dean lets go.

"I'm gonna get some sleep," he says. He does something that slides Sam's right hand all the way down to the top of the mattress, and then does the same to Sam's left hand. The sound it makes is kind of a little _zrrip_ , and doesn't sound like a leather sound at all, and Dean doesn't seem to have to unhook anything to do it.

Sam is so busy thinking up objections to the sleeping part that he forgets to try and figure out how that works.

"Dean," he says.

Dean takes him by both hips and pulls him downward a little, and then yanks some of the pillows out from behind Sam's head. "You okay like that, Sammy? The pillows okay? Your arms resting okay on the bed?"

"Dean," Sam says firmly.

Dean puts a pillow on top of Sam's arm. He leans over and drags a blanket up and over them, and tucks himself into the scant space between Sam's body and the side of the bed. He puts his head on the pillow on Sam's arm and throws one thigh over the top of one of Sam's.

"Dean!" Sam says.

Dean puts his hand over Sam's mouth gently, just for a moment. "I want to sleep. If I have to gag you to get you to shut the hell up, I will, Sam."

"You will not!" Sam says, and he doesn't believe it for a second, except he sort of does.

"I will," Dean says implacably. "And you know it. Go to sleep, Sammy. You're already tired out. You just don't know it yet."

Sam fumes silently until he hears Dean start to snore. Then he fumes even harder, and he has no intention of going to sleep, he's just waiting for Dean to really be sound asleep and then he's going to use the button on him. 

***

Sam wakes with Dean's mouth on his cock. He's already hard, and has been for a while if the ache of his balls is anything to go by. Dean isn't exactly sucking him off. He's not sure what Dean is doing, actually, so he just lays there for a minute, and eventually figures out that Dean is sucking him for several sloppy seconds, and then working spit down the rest of Sam's cock. Like he's just getting Sam wet because he feels like it, or wants to know what it feels like, or why ever Dean does things.

Sam hitches his hips up hopefully. They barely move, but it's enough that Dean gets the hint, because his mouth goes tight and sucking around Sam's cock, his tongue sliding around the head, which makes Sam groan with appreciation. Dean's hand goes tight around the base, but he doesn't pick up a rhythm like he did the last time, he just twists his hand around to the side without any up and down motion, and Sam is shocked to discover that he likes that, he _loves_ that, it feels like being pulled in two directions at once. It's so good his thighs shudder, and he moans when Dean just sucks harder and does it again, all wet with spit.

"That's good, Sammy," Dean says, pulling off.

"Dean!" Sam objects, and Dean kisses the inside of his thigh and laps gently at his balls until Sam is shuddering again. "You," Sam says, and what he means is, " _You finish sucking my cock right now, you fucker!_ " but what he actually says is, "You are so fucking mean." 

Dean laughs and nuzzles at Sam's balls some more. "You don't even know what you're sayin', Sam," Dean tells Sam's balls. "You don't even know, yet." Then he gives Sam's cock a long wet lick from base to tip, and climbs up to straddle Sam's waist. Sam can't arch up into it at all, but the warm, firm curve of Dean's weight settling against his cock is enough to make him moan a little.

"I want to come," Sam says, trying hard not to sound sulky. He's pretty sure he fails.

"You're gonna want lots of things," Dean says philosophically. "For one, within the next minute or two, you're gonna want to take a piss. You're gonna want a shower. You're gonna want to brush your teeth."

As soon as Dean says the word piss, Sam has to. He squirms a little at the sudden awareness of his uncomfortably full bladder. Dean does not appear to notice.

"This is the one and only time I'm gonna offer you this bargain, Sam," Dean says, and the way he sounds is so unexpectedly weighty that Sam stops thinking about needing to pee and pays attention. "I'll let you go to the bathroom, take a shower, brush your teeth, and you will do it my way, you will do it exactly how I tell you to, without fighting me at all."

"Or?" Sam asks, because there has to be an or. Without an or, it's just an ultimatum, not a bargain.

"Or I will leave you strapped down to this bed," Dean says with a finality that Sam doesn't want to believe, but which is dauntingly sincere nevertheless. 

Sam opens his mouth, and Dean puts a hand over it. Sam wonders briefly if Dean can see in the dark somehow, like a cat. They've been in this room for hours, and it is still lightless for Sam, pitch black, not even any kind of ambient light from under the door. There isn't any light for his eyes to adjust to, or he'd at least be able to see shapes by now, blurs or outlines.

"I'm not gonna listen to you telling me all the ways that I can't do that, Sam. They all come down to how it would be messy for you and a pain in the ass for me, and none of it means a damned thing to me. If you don't like this bargain, you can lay here like this, and when it comes to it, I'll clean you up. You can have it either way. You do it however you want it. But don't for a second think I won't come through on this. And if you say you'll do it my way and then you change your mind, you don't get another shot at it."

Dean moves his hand away, and Sam doesn't say anything for a little while. He is sifting through the way Dean's voice goes down a register when he really means something, the faintly drawn tension that means he's giving you a warning, the way it unambiguously, undeniably turns Sam on so much he doesn't even know what to do about it. It makes absolutely no reasonable sense to be turned on by Dean's flatly factual assertion that he will leave Sam tied to this bed until he pisses himself if necessary, but there it is.

Sam tells himself it's a control thing, that it kind of makes sense in that context, but it isn't like he's forgotten the things Dean told him before, that it was that, some of it, but only some.

Sam really hopes not to discover that he wants Dean to piss on him, or that he wants to be a pony or something. Sam might die of humiliation. 

Though even then, even if it's something like that, Dean will be just fine with it. Dean will never laugh or needle Sam about it. It would never even cross Dean's mind to do that. It's not even a question.

"I want to suck you off," Sam says, truthfully. It comes out without premeditation, but it's still true.

Dean doesn't say anything for a few seconds.

"That isn't actually an answer to the question, Sam," he says, sounding a little pained. No. He's turned on.

Sam thinks about it, and he has never said anything like it out loud to Dean. Somehow, it just hadn't ever happened.

"Yes, I will do exactly what you say," Sam says.

"Do you want to suck me now, during, or after?" Dean asks, and catches a hand in Sam's hair and tugs a little. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to remind Sam that he's still wearing the posture collar, and he isn't actually sure how that's going to work.

He wants to know, though. That is. The idea of sucking Dean's cock while wearing the collar makes Sam feel a little terrified and a little giddy at the same time.

Sam doesn't realize he's actually panting a little until he hears his own voice whisper breathlessly, "Now, please."

Dean swings his leg over Sam and gets up. Sam remembers that he has to piss, and possibly should have opted for after, but then Dean is unhooking the strap holding down Sam's hips and sliding a hand under his back. Sam cooperatively arches up as well as he really can, and Dean pushes what is definitely one of their duffel bags underneath the middle of Sam's back, right under his shoulder blades. He shoves a pillow on top of that, and then does it again, another duffel bag under the middle of Sam's back, another pillow on top of that. Then he pulls all the pillows out from under Sam's head, and Sam's head rocks back, canted almost upside down.

Sam moans, and Dean cuts it off with a hand over Sam's mouth. "I swear to God, Sammy, you make that noise while my cock is in your mouth, this'll be the shortest blowjob you ever give." Sam can hear Dean breathing hard, now, too, and Sam really has to piss, and he really wants to suck Dean's cock more. Dean braces his hands on both of Sam's shoulders and pushes, and everything on the bed slides down a little, including Sam. It pulls his arms tight and a little down, stretches him out with his back bowed, and Sam moans again at the way that feels.

"Man, Sammy," Dean says in a growly voice. "Is this your favorite?" he asks, and catches Sam's chin and tips his face to one side as far as the collar will allow. He brushes his lips along Sam's when he speaks. "Is this the way you like to suck cock, all stretched out on your back?"

"It... it doesn't always work," Sam tells him, and is surprised to find that he sounds upset at the idea, and further surprised to find that he _is_ upset, that he wants it to work like this, he _really_ wants it to be just like this. "The angle," he tells Dean anxiously. "It doesn't always work, Dean, it..."

Dean puts his hand over Sam's mouth again. "It's gonna work," he says soothingly. "I know how to make it work, Sam, I been sucked off at least twice in every one of the lower forty-eight."

Sam lets out something that wants to be a laugh and a moan at the same time behind Dean's hand, and Dean moves it away from Sam's mouth again.

"Just a minute," Dean says, and moves away. Sam can't even hear him moving around, so it's a surprise to feel Dean climbing easily over one of Sam's arms.

"Why is the light off?" Sam whispers. "Why is this in the dark?"

Dean leans over and kisses Sam's stomach upside down. "Ask me after I come, if you still wanna know," Dean says.

Sam feels him spread his legs and angle himself down, one hand balanced next to Sam's chest. "You got your button, Sam?" Dean asks.

"Yes, I, yes," Sam says, and closes his hand around it briefly, but Dean is practically straddling his face, and Sam can smell him, the soap and the musky smell and the sweat, and Sam's head is tipped back as far as the collar will allow, and all he can think of is Dean's cock this close to his face in the dark, why it's different than it would be in the light, if Dean is ever going to get the fuck on with it.

Dean bows down again and kisses the middle of Sam's chest this time, and then the head of his cock bumps up against Sam's chin and drags across his bottom lip, and Sam's tongue curls around the head of Dean's cock immediately to taste Dean, the weirdly slick-sweet taste that is uniquely Dean, and Dean gives him a few seconds, Sam _knows_ that he's being _given_ those seconds, and then Dean cups a hand under Sam's collar and shifts him up a fraction, and pushes right in, all at once. 

Sam's throat makes one weak, half-hearted attempt to close up, and Dean pushes past it, and Sam moans just in the exact way he was definitely not supposed to, high and desperate and hungry, but he can't help it, he can't help it. Dean is making it work _exactly right_ and Sam can feel himself opening right up, it's almost easy in spite of the tears Sam can feel trickling from his eyes, and Dean's breathing sounds like a bellows.

"It _is_ your favorite," Dean pants, and jerks his hips in tight, short thrusts. "Just like this, just laying back and taking it." Sam moans again, and he isn't surprised, exactly, that Dean is a dirty talker, but he sort of is, too. But he's willing to sort it out another time because it is so fucking hot Sam can't quite hold it in his mind, that Dean is feeding Sam his cock and telling Sam to lay back and take it. Sam's cock is jerking against his belly, and he has to piss so bad, and the way he's all arched back isn't helping, but in some weird way that's hot too, it's all twisted up together. Dean says, "The ones that didn't get it right, they just didn't know how much they should want your mouth, Sam, they'da tried harder if they knew how, how fuckin' sweet you are, how fuckin' much you want it." He presses in deeper and twists his hips a little. Sam is abruptly aware that there is something smooth snugged down at the base of Dean's cock. A cock ring. Dean is wearing a cock ring. 

Little starbursts explode in Sam's vision. He makes an imploring sound around Dean's cock, and Dean exhales harshly.

Sam's mouth is abruptly empty and then Dean is pulling him up by his hair and kissing him sideways, biting at Sam's bottom lip. "It is your favorite, isn't it, Sam?" Dean whispers into Sam's mouth. "Flat on your back, you want it just like that, you love sucking cock, and you're fucking great at it, but that ain't what this is, Sam, is it?"

"No," Sam whispers back, raspy; he feels entranced at Dean's voice, at the situation, at the neediness in his own voice. "No."

"What is it?" Dean demands.

"Fuck my throat," Sam says, voice hitching unsteadily, but there is something blindingly white sidling up in the black of his peripheral vision, and he knows, Sam knows, that Dean is taking him to it.

"No, Sammy, that's fuckin' beautiful, that's so fuckin' beautiful I want to fuck your throat forever just in gratitude that I ever got to hear you say it, but that ain't it. Come on," Dean whispers, and licks at Sam's mouth with a swift curl of tongue. "Come on, tell. Tell your big brother." 

"Take," Sam breathes out, "take it, make me, please, Dean," and Dean kisses him again, bites his tongue.

"Good, Sammy," he whispers fiercely, his hands fisted in Sam's hair. "That's so good, Sam, you're perfect," and then he's up and pushing back between Sam's lips, and Sam is just hitching in helpless sounds until he loses his air, and then moaning and choking a little, and Dean doesn't even pause when Sam chokes, he just ignores it entirely, and Sam squirms helplessly at all the places where he's tied down. He thrusts his hips up at the empty air, and he doesn't even know Dean is doing anything to the collar until Dean curls a hand across Sam's throat and says, low and hot, "I can feel my cock in your throat, Sam," and then Sam is making a low, agonized sound. He has never in his life come without having his cock touched, stroked, he doesn't do that like Dean can, but he feels like he might, like he almost could, his whole body is taut with it. Dean says, "I wanna feel you swallow around my cock," and then Sam is swallowing and he feels like he's being fucking electrocuted, like sparks should be arcing off his skin, like his brain is full of razor sharp current, and then Dean is pulling out of his mouth with a lot more care than he'd used pressing in, and Sam is coughing and is still somehow managing to grate out words like "please" and "Dean" and "please." 

Dean kisses him quiet, hard at first, rough mouth and sharp teeth, and then softer when Sam finally stops whining between kisses, just senseless repetitions of Dean's name and the word please, and yes, he wants an orgasm, he really desperately does, but he's almost sure that isn't what he's asking for. It's like a forgotten word, trembling on the tip of Sam's mind, whatever it is, whatever he really wants Dean to give him. Sam makes the conscious decision to let it go, eventually, when he can't drag it out of his brain after a long time of Dean kissing him and stroking his hands soothingly down Sam's chest and arms, and shushing Sam gently with his mouth in Sam's hair.

"I have to pee," Sam says eventually. He isn't even surprised at how his voice sounds, now. He's resigned to the fact that it's going to sound like that for a while. Maybe until Dean gets tired of hearing it sound like that.

That thought is enough to bring on another round of reasonless shuddering, which Dean shushes him through.

"I feel like you oughta know, if you ever suck my cock like that again, I'll probably have a stroke halfway through and then you'll suffocate to death," Dean says. 

Sam snorts out a laugh, surprised into it, and then he actually _does_ calm down. He feels it happen, like falling half asleep.

"I'm going to pee on you," Sam threatens.

"Whatever floats your tugboat," Dean says agreeably. "You still wanna do this my way?"

"Am I ever going to get to come again?" Sam asks.

"Ask me no questions, Sammy, and I'll tell you no lies." Dean sounds so smug Sam would really like to be able to see him so he can smack him right in the head.

"How are you so blase about this whole thing? I mean, yes, I get that you know what's going on and I don't, but how are you so... so calm about it all?"

Dean is silent for a few seconds. Then he says, very quietly, "I planned this. I thought about every way I could think of it might go. I been thinking about it for so long I can't keep track anymore. I'm not blase about anything, and I am so far from calm I can't even see it from here. But one of us has got to be able to think halfway straight, and that ain't gonna be you right now. That's my job. Now, you wanna piss, or what?"

"Yes," Sam says, but he's still thinking about how long, exactly, Dean has been thinking about this. "What do I do?"

Dean gets up and drags everything back out from underneath Sam. "First of all, you don't fight me while I set you loose. It's gonna be harder than you think, Sam, but you gotta be good."

It _is_ harder than Sam thinks. Dean unhooks his hands first, and then unconcernedly bends and unhooks his ankles, apparently unaware that even with only his hands free, Sam is pretty sure he could get Dean down, pin him under Sam's greater weight and unhook his own ankles at his leisure. Sam twitches while Dean releases his legs, his hands opening and closing, while he tells himself again and again not to move, not to fight, not to grab Dean and wrestle him down.

It's easier when Dean slides a hand under his back and urges Sam to sit up. Just knowing he _could_ do something makes it easier not to.

Sam further understands that that isn't how it's supposed to feel, but it's something else he intuits without really understanding it, and it's unexpectedly more difficult to be on this end of those flashes of insight. That he wants to feel it the way he's supposed to, he really does, and he doesn't know how.

Dean takes the collar off, but nothing else. Sam can still feel straps around his legs and there are unexpectedly a couple around his biceps, or right above his biceps, actually. Sam isn't sure how he hadn't noticed them. There's one low around his waist, and there are bits hanging down, too, dangling straps with metal on the ends that shift and bump into Sam's skin when he moves.

"Are we taking this off?" Sam asks.

"No," Dean says simply, and pulls Sam's wrists with enough intent that Sam understands it to mean he should stand up. Sam does, and his need to take a piss becomes almost unbearable.

"Can we have light for this?" Sam asks, thinking about trying to take a piss with a hard on in the dark.

"No," Dean says again. "Take small steps."

Then Dean is leading him along slowly, carefully, and when Sam looks down he sees a slim line of faintly luminescent tape, so dim he can barely make it out. "So, that's how you're doing it," Sam says, and follows the line Dean is leading them along. "That's... that's clever."

"I have moments of clever," Dean says dryly. He leads Sam to the bathroom corner, and does something Sam can't see, then hands Sam a toothbrush.

"I have got to piss, Dean," Sam says.

"You gonna be able to manage it with that hard on?" Dean asks.

"Probably not," Sam says, faintly miserable about it.

"Then you might as well brush your teeth," Dean says.

Sam brushes his teeth left handed. Dean fills a glass for him to rinse out his mouth, and gently pushes Sam's head down until Sam assumes he's over the sink. Sam spits.

Sam jumps when the shower turns on and soaks the left side of him without warning. It's not cold at all, but the sound of running water makes Sam's urgent need to piss almost painful. "I have to--" he begins.

"Piss," Dean finishes for him. "I know, Sam."

"Shouldn't we take this stuff off?" Sam asks, and works hard not to do the pee-pee dance, even here in the dark, where no one can see him doing it.

"No," Dean says.

"It feels like leather," Sam says.

"I know what it is, Sam," Dean says, and now he sounds vaguely irritated.

Sam, who has been dealing with Dean in various stages of irritation for most of his life, finds himself in the unprecedented position of feeling guilty about it.

When Dean pushes him gently under the water, Sam goes without protest.

"It won't hurt it," Dean says soothingly, like he knows he was grumpy with Sam and is trying to make it up to him. Sam relaxes a little, and has no idea why. He thinks that should be getting old, but it's not, not quite. This is different than everything that has lead up to it, but it's the same, too. Sam has been trusting Dean to do the heavy lifting on most of it, and it seems pointless to withdraw that trust now. Not just pointless, but maybe actually impossible. Sam isn't really built to just go with it the way Dean is, but he's doing what he can, and he thinks Dean knows it. "It'll just dry and fit you better." Dean sounds as though he approves of this, and Sam is weirdly glad to know it. "You'll leave some damp spots on the bed, but it won't hurt anything. And your button is waterproof."

Dean strokes unexpectedly soapy hands across Sam's chest, and Sam stands still and lets him. Dean is as conscientious about this as he had been about licking Sam before, and Sam is breathing hard before Dean even gets to his waist. When the silence goes on so long that Sam starts to feel itchy about it, he says, "I'm never going to lose this hard on so I can piss if you don't stop touching me."

"We're in the shower," Dean says. "Just piss, Sam."

Sam actually has to think about that for several seconds. His brain tells him that he must have misheard it. "I'll," he says helplessly. "I'll."

"Yeah, I know. And it'll wash down the drain in under a second. It's okay."

"I don't want to," Sam whispers.

"Okay," Dean says agreeably, as though it genuinely doesn't make a difference to him, and just like that, Sam is pissing all over both of them. Dean slides an arm around his lower back, and holds him steady, and Sam makes a sound that is half distress and half relief.

Sam just stands there afterward, a little stunned, caught in the curve of Dean's arm. "Is that a thing, for you?" he whispers eventually. And then, "Jeez, is that a thing for me?"

Dean is silent long enough that Sam's imagination goes a little crazy, mostly in an alarming way. "It's not really a thing for me," he says finally. "I'm mostly indifferent to watersports. Not opposed, just not that interested. But I'd be lying if I told you that wasn't hot, you giving it up like that. Just letting go. The piss was just kinda... incidental." Sam thinks about asking about himself again, but then Dean adds, "Not really for you, either." But he reaches down and closes his hand around Sam's still very present erection. "But." He strokes Sam once, his hand just soapy enough to make it almost too good for Sam to stand right at the moment. "But, incidental." 

Dean drops the whole thing after that, and Sam lets him. Dean washes his hair and Sam keeps his eyes closed to avoid getting soap in them.

"You gotta go to the bathroom?" Dean asks, which is really surprisingly discreet of Dean, actually. Dean takes Sam's hand without waiting for an answer, and walks him two steps and puts it on the back of the toilet. "I'm gonna wash my hair," Dean tells him. "I'm gonna be right in the shower."

Sam understands that this illusion of privacy is all he's going to get, that in all actuality, Dean is three feet away, but he's so glad to have even that illusion that he doesn't object.

"Come back to the shower," Dean says after a few minutes, and Sam does. Dean scrubs industriously at his legs, his balls, and puts his soapy hands all over Sam's cock without actually stroking it, and it's still so good Sam is moaning and leaning on Dean a little. Dean turns him around and scrubs his ass, too, without any apparent hesitation, and when he works over Sam's hole, Sam moans so loudly he's a little embarrassed at it. "Soap is not good lubricant, Sam," Dean tells him a little roughly, but he still works a fingertip into Sam's ass, and Sam makes another assortment of noises that he can't quite stifle. Dean turns Sam back around again and says, "So sweet for me, Sammy," and Sam shoves his face into Dean's wet neck and spreads his legs as wide as he can. "Yeah," Dean says, but he still doesn't do anything more, doesn't give Sam anything else, just strokes across Sam's hole and pushes a little, just enough to make Sam crazy.

After a while, Dean sets Sam away and turns off the water. He scrubs Sam roughly dry, and Sam doesn't even want to think about what his hair is going to look like if Dean ever does turn the lights on. "It's a good thing I didn't know how fuckin' much you want to be fucked, Sam," Dean says. It's almost casual, the way he says it. Like he's telling Sam about something he's not overly concerned about. "I never woulda made it 'til now if I'd known it."

Sam has no idea what to say to that, so doesn't say anything. It makes him feel hot and mortified and uncertain all at once, but Dean just continues to rub Sam dry, apparently not expecting a response. Dean swipes the towel over Sam's cock, gets the creases between Sam's balls and his thighs with easy efficiency. Dean dries himself more quickly, almost carelessly. Sam hears it when Dean tosses the towel someplace.

"Come on," Dean says, and takes Sam's wrist and leads him along the faint line on the floor.

And Sam is fine. Sam is doing okay. He knows where they are going, and what's going to happen when they get there. He is under no delusions. But he stops when the line ends, unable to make himself close the last foot or so of distance. Dean tugs at his wrist once, and Sam hears himself take a weirdly stuttering breath, but he can't.

"Do this for me, Sam," Dean orders gently.

Sam takes another unsteady breath, and thinks for a second that he's going to be able to. He feels his body sway a little forward, but his feet stay planted firmly. He makes a small, distressed sound.

"Okay," Dean says calmly. "We got three options here. The easy way, the hard way, and the worst way. The easy way is you walk your ass over here and get into the fucking bed, and that's the only one you get to know, Sammy. You gotta pick how you want it, but..." Dean's voice drops low. "I am putting you back down. I'm not fucking with you. You can't get away from me. I promise you that."

"You didn't even hook them together," Sam says, with no idea he's going to say it until it's already out of his mouth. "Jesus, Dean, I already tried to get away once!"

"No, you didn't," Dean says gently. "What you did was make me show you that you couldn't get away. It ain't the same thing." 

It isn't the same thing. Sam can see exactly how it isn't.

"You wanna get away, Sam, you push that button. I'll turn on the lights, get you dressed, I'll put your fuckin' shoes on you myself, and you can walk right outta here. This ain't about you getting away. This is about how hard you feel like it's gotta be. Any way you pick is okay, Sam. I'm not leaving and I'm not _ever_ thinking any less of you. You do what you gotta do to make this alright in your head, but I got you, and I am _keeping you_." 

Sam curls his hand around the button, and is fully aware that he has no intention of using it. He is also totally aware that Dean is right about it not being about escape. Sam doesn't want to get away. He doesn't even want to pretend he does.

But beyond that, he has no idea what is happening in his head. He could fucking pound nails with his cock, and his breathing is shallow and quick, he feels like he's received a jolt of adrenaline straight to the bloodstream, but he can't figure out what the fuck is stopping him.

He doesn't hate being tied down, there have been moments in which he actively liked it, when it did something for him, even if Sam isn't sure exactly what it had been. But Sam can't take the step. He can't make himself take the step.

"I can't," Sam says helplessly. "I can't."

"It's okay," Dean says gently, and then jabs the cool, angular barrel of a gun under the hinge of Sam's jaw. Sam instinctively takes a step back, and Dean catches him around the back of the neck. "This is your gun, Sam," he says tightly. He nudges it upward, and Sam's head tips back because his body knows not to fuck with the guy with the gun. His body knows it so hard that even though Sam would bet his life that he is absolutely safe right now, _is_ betting his life on it, he still can't quite breathe. "Is it loaded?" Dean asks. 

"No," Sam says, and he is sure. Under no circumstances would Dean shove a gun under his chin if Dean was not certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was unloaded.

"Did you unload it yourself?" Dean asks, and he doesn't have to make the threat more naked than that. They grew up with the same deeply instilled gun safety rules. It's only safe if you made it safe, and even then it's only safe until you put it down.

"No," Sam says, and hears himself swallow.

The sound of Dean thumbing the hammer back is enormous in the silence.

"You will never," Sam says, but his voice is so hoarse it's almost a croak.

"On the bed," Dean says.

"You will never," Sam repeats, a whisper.

"Right now," Dean says, and pulls Sam slowly forward by the back of the neck. Sam's stubborn feet stumble a little forward, and then take the step. "On your back," Dean says, and moves his body to keep the gun tucked right up under Sam's chin while Sam does it, because it doesn't matter that Sam knows Dean is not going to shoot him.

It doesn't matter that Sam believes it with utter faith.

He also believes that Dean might. He believes it the same way, on truly black nights, when they are both exhausted and one or both of them have brushed by death in the darkness, he believes the sun might never come up.

"Right hand," Dean says, and Sam offers it up, then offers up the left without prompting. Dean puts the gun on Sam's chest and catches Sam's right leg and bends it up. Sam hears the little clicking sounds, and this time he feels the way it cinches his calf to his thigh. Then Dean leans into Sam's leg until it's tucked up to his chest, and does something that makes it stay that way, his knee nearly touching his shoulder. He walks around the top of the bed and repeats the whole process with Sam's left leg, which raises Sam right off the bed from mid-back down.

Dean makes some noise, which Sam only really notes because Dean has been so eerily quiet about everything, right from the beginning. The gun, yeah, it had been like Dean pulled that right out of the air, but also the cock ring, even the way he'd moved Sam around had been quiet. He thinks of the way Dean had lined up their weapons on the table, like an army. It's not that he's tidy, exactly. That's actually kind of hilarious. It's that he wants everything within reach, if he needs it. Sam imagines all the things Dean needs for this all lined up and laid out however Dean categorizes things like this.

It's a quiet, rustling sound, could be anything, and then a soft _brrrip_ that Sam can identify easily in the dark. It's the little ripping sound you get when you tear a condom off the end of a strip. A second later, the condom lands on Sam's chest next to the gun. One sharp little corner is poking Sam. A second after that, something heavier lands on Sam's chest with a quiet slap, which Sam identifies by the cool shape of it: a tube of lube.

A second after that, Sam connects those three dots, and he doesn't believe the shape they make. He doesn't.

"Dean," he says. "Dean."

Dean slides a hand behind Sam's head and Sam feels the familiar structure of the collar sliding around his neck. Dean solicitously tugs the wet ends of Sam's hair out of the back.

"Dean," Sam says again, and he can hear it in his voice, a little high but not sharp, uncertain, the belief that the sun might never come up.

"There's something about the collar you like," Dean says. His voice is contemplative. "Something other than what I bought it for. You let me put it on, every time. I thought I'd get bit, at least once."

The idea had never even crossed Sam's mind. "I don't have to hold my head up," Sam says involuntarily, then blinks. "I... I don't even know what the hell that means," he admits, which comes out sounding like a plea.

"That's okay," Dean says, and touches Sam's mouth. Then he puts something down across Sam's eyes and pushes his hands under Sam's head, and Sam can't even fight what has got to be a blindfold because he's wearing the collar.

Sam doesn't say anything when Dean finishes buckling it. Dean adjusts it, tugs bits of Sam's hair out of the strap, touches Sam's mouth again. Sam can hear himself breathing, but his eyes are burning, and he doesn't want to know how he will sound if he tries to say something. He can feel the edges of his button biting into the flesh on the inside of his palm.

He hears the click as Dean turns on the light. For moment, he goes wire tight. His whole body wrenches against every point at which he has been made immobile, and while he doesn't actually thrash, he strains hard, as hard as he can, so hard that both of his wrists ache when he finally is able to make himself stop. Then he curls into himself as much as he can, he's sure, he knows he's _huddling_ inasmuch as he can while bound down on his back, and he can't see anything. It's apparently a very good blindfold, soft inside, and Sam can't even see light around the edges, but he knows it's there, like there is some infinitesimal amount of weight to it that Sam can feel settling across his skin. 

Dean touches him, just Sam's leg, and he's familiar with the shape of Dean's hand, but he still flinches away, and he clamps his mouth tight against the sound he can feel caught in his chest and throat. He can feel the bottom edge of the blindfold going damp, and he can only be a little grateful that it isn't that awful, wrenching crying from before. It isn't much consolation, tiny really, but it's all Sam has.

Dean's hand closes around Sam's cock, and yes, he is still hard. Sam crushes the bitterness back, the certainty that Dean is just being cruel now, that Dean can clearly see that in the light, and there's no reason to force Sam to know it, too, that Sam's own body is six feet four inches of solid betrayal, not counting the length of his traitorous cock.

Dean settles at the end of the bed, and Sam feels the things on his chest gathered up, Dean's fingertips whispering across his skin, and they're abruptly gone.

Sam strains again, this time without even the slightest hint of control, and this time he thrashes, throws his head back, does everything in his power to get something to give, anything, and Dean's hand on his belly does the exact opposite of soothing him, he throws his weight back away from it, hears the bed scrape a little on the floor.

He can hear Dean doing something, and he can see what it is clearly in his mind, if not with his eyes. Sam thrashes side to side, and can actually get a little movement that way, a few inches, and then Dean catches his left knee and does something that pins it out wide enough that Sam can feel in in the big tendon at the inside of his thigh. Dean does the same with the other knee, and Sam had thought he couldn't move before, that he was pinned, but this is worse, his thighs splayed wide and held that way, that he _knows_ Dean is looking at that, this is _much_ worse, and Sam's chest is being crushed under the weight of the sound he isn't making.

His whole body is shaking, only that word isn't strong enough for what Sam is doing, Sam isn't even doing something as mundane as shuddering, Sam is trembling and jolting and jerking, he is made of tremors and quakes, like he could come apart at the joints, like he is made badly, and there is some essential fault or weakness that could unmake him at any instant. 

And Dean doesn't say anything, in the light, like his basic ability to even attempt to anchor Sam has been abandoned as well, and that is the worst thing, somehow, that Dean isn't even _trying_ to talk Sam through this.

Sam can't even be one hundred percent certain that Dean is still even present until Dean's thumb swipes slick across Sam's hole, and even in silence Sam recognizes that to mean that that's all he's going to get for prep, and he's proved correct an instant later, feels the incorrect shape of something that was never meant to be inside him, all blunt corners, too cold, even tucked into a layer of latex, pressing at him.

Why even bother with the condom, it's not like Sam is going to get a fucking STD from a gun, but he knows why, he knows that there is no sight, Sam had filed it down himself, but there could be other slight edges, places where it could catch at Sam, and he can't reconcile that care with how Dean slowly, implacably presses it forward until Sam's body gives.

It is the wrong shape, it is the wrong _everything_ , too cool and too many angles and it's a _gun_ , Dean is pushing the barrel of a slicked up gun into Sam's ass, and a low, miserable sound escapes Sam even with his mouth clamped shut. His right hand tightens so hard around his button that it hurts his palm and the insides of his fingers, and he thinks he will use it, he won't be able to help it, he can't take it, and Sam doesn't _want_ to, he doesn't, he wants to do what Dean wants, he wants to want it, remembers how it feels to want it, but he can't remember how.

"What's the first thing," Dean says, his voice a crack in the silence. "The first true thing, Sam, what did I tell you?"

And Sam is so grateful to hear Dean, to _hear_ him, that his mouth opens and Sam doesn't even try to stop himself from answering. "I am completely helpless," Sam says, his voice a thick, hurt simulacrum of itself.

Dean shifts the gun, and Sam doesn't know when it had gone so deep, but he can feel the trigger guard against his skin, and when Dean shifts it and pulls back, it drags hard against Sam's prostate, and the resultant arc of pleasure is so unexpected and so sharp that Sam takes a full breath, inhales hard, for what feels like the first time since Dean had pushed the gun up under his chin to begin with.

"Good, Sam, yes," Dean says, and presses his lips to the base of Sam's cock, a brief, barely there pressure that nevertheless makes Sam's head start to swim, but familiarly, Sam grasps immediately, the way it should, the way it's meant to right now. "What else, tell me what else."

"I," Sam says, chokes, breathless again and reaching for it, for that twisting, aching space in his mind, and Dean pushes the gun into Sam again and turns it slowly, pressed just right, angled to shatter Sam with pleasure, and he arches ineffectually and makes a noise that sounds like _unnnngh_. Dean licks at Sam's thigh like he's encouraging Sam, and it does encourage him. "You," Sam manages, and becomes aware that he is hot with sweat, and is shaking now, something helpless that isn't half-struggle, something that just is. "You did this to me." He has to work for it, it's a moan and a sob crushed together, but Dean licks at Sam's thigh again. 

"I'm _doing_ this to you, Sam, I'm doin' it right now," Dean whispers, "and you are so pretty, you are so fuckin' pretty I will never forget how you look," and Sam starts to hitch in quick, tight breaths, crying a little, unable to help it, but not feeling a very pressing need to try, either. Dean pushes Sam's balls up and kisses beneath them, lips right up against the barrel of the gun, then licks around it, tips the barrel up, and Sam cries out harshly, giving voice to some of what is coiled in his chest helplessly, and Dean moans like it's the best thing that's ever happened to him, he licks at Sam's hole where it's stretched around the gun and makes a soft sound.

Sam doesn't know what it is, what that sound means, but it's what he needs, it's what _Sam_ needs, and he feels it break open painlessly in his head, he feels it in his chest, Dean had told him, in his guts where it is all hot, visceral want, where he doesn't care what is in him, just wants more, and he feels himself go loose and easy, lets himself feel the way he doesn't have to hold himself up at all, he is already held up, Dean made it that way for Sam. Sam tips his head back until his collar stops him and makes a low, begging sound.

"Sam," Dean says. "Oh, Sammy," and pushes the gun into Sam hard, the trigger guard bites into the tender flesh of Sam's hole and Sam squirms up into it, open-mouthed and panting, Dean opens him up with it and fucks him and closes his fist around Sam's cock.

Sam wails and tries to jerk into Dean's hand, and he can't, and Dean licks the tip of his cock, and Sam sobs out, "Dean!" and chokes a little when Dean kisses the crease of his thigh, and moans out, "I need, I need."

"You'll take what I give you," Dean says huskily, and the tiny, painless explosion happens again in Sam's head, and tears through his body, flays him open bloodlessly, but not painlessly, he hurts, he feels raw and unfinished, but Dean is tugging the gun out of his body. Dean's palms are hot and damp and stick at Sam's sweaty skin, but he does something so that Sam's ass isn't pulled quite so high off the bed, and then the blunt head of Dean's cock is pressing Sam open and Sam is whining, breath jerking in his chest.

Dean is slick, but not so slick that he doesn't burn Sam all the way in, and this is not the first time, but it is the first time Sam knows how it feels to have Dean push him open, stretch him wide, and it's so good Sam never wants anything else, he wants the first rough burn of it forever. "This!" Sam shouts. "This, this, I need--"

"You need what I make you take," Dean growls, and the knives of lust at the base of Sam's spine tear at him and his hips jerk, and he shudders up, shudders around Dean and feels the way Dean doesn't give, the way Dean is solid, and Sam shouts. Dean slams into him in response, and Sam is going to come, Dean's hand is curled a little loosely around his cock and it's going to be enough, he yells again, and Dean groans, "God, Sam, God," and Sam _can't_ , he needs it and he can't, he is so so close. Dean's hand goes tight around Sam's cock, strokes him, is slick, is so good Sam is voiceless and writhing with it, and Dean is fucking him in time, hard, fast, his fist and his cock both harsh and Sam wants to die, it is so good he wants to die, and he can hear himself making dying noises, but he can't come, he can't, he can't.

"You," Sam groans, "Please, you, you have to, Dean," and Dean sounds a little like he's dying, too, but he doesn't say anything, he doesn't stop and he doesn't come and he's killing Sam, Sam is going to _die_ , and a brief, tearing sound escapes his throat, and he hears himself, almost totally coherently, say, "You first, you, I have to know, I need to, to _feel_ when it, it's slick and wet, Dean, _please_ , I have to know..."

"That I'm done?" Dean asks, but not like it's really a question, and Sam goes hot, he somehow _blushes_ as though he wasn't already on fire, and the only noise he can make is a soft, helpless sound. Dean keeps fucking him, but he slows way down and lets go of Sam's cock. He spreads his knees and falls forward over Sam, his hands planted on either side of Sam's head, and puts his mouth on Sam's neck to whisper, "Say it, Sam, you know it, you say it for me, tell me you need to know I'm done with your ass, tell me I have to come first, that you can't unless you know I already got what I want from you."

He's rocking into Sam almost gently now, shallower, but Sam still feels like he has razors under his skin, like they are embedded in his brain, not like the painless pulsing, it's too big, and too dark and he sees the shape of it and doesn't want to see it all, he doesn't want to let it in the light, he _knows_ it's not a good thing, it's a thing in the dark that wants to rip his guts out, because it's not what Dean is saying, not exactly, and Dean knows it, too, Dean is patiently steering him toward it, but Sam doesn't want to go.

"I don't want to," Sam whispers hitchingly.

"Okay, Sam, it's okay," Dean says, and puts a hand on Sam's face. Dean says it like before, like he's not frustrated or upset or disappointed. He just levers himself back up and pushes back into Sam hard. "Just take it then, don't do anything, just take it for me," and it works, shifts Sam back to the place where he needs, it doesn't even take him long, Sam had never been that far away from it. Dean makes Sam mindless again, wanting and jerking up into every stroke, to where Sam wants to come so badly he aches with it, and he doesn't want to talk, he doesn't want to think, but he needs so much, he needs Dean, and he can't help it.

"Please, will you," he pants. "Please, Dean."

"Almost, Sammy, almost," Dean breathes and hooks his hands behind Sam's knees and spreads him so wide Sam's thighs arc with pain that only makes Sam shudder, helpless under Dean's hands, and Dean won't, Dean waits and Sam knows he wants to, he can feel the way Dean moves, he gets jerky and tense, but Dean doesn't until Sam shouts out something senseless and needy, and then he says, "Sam," and his cock jerks in Sam's ass and Dean grinds his hips forward hard, Sam feels it, feels wet, and Dean somehow manages to pant out, "That's it, that's good, I'm done with you, Sammy."

Sam comes immediately, straining at Dean's hands on his thighs, and Dean groans again, a short, harsh bark of sound, grinding so hard against Sam that he can feel Dean's hipbones, and moans, "Jesus, Sam, Jesus, you're so fuckin' sweet, your ass is so fuckin' sweet," and it knocks Sam into some kind of orgasmic backlash. He shouts and shoves onto Dean's cock as much as he can and his cock jerks and jerks, his balls clench into desperate knots of want. He can hear himself whining and Dean's hands on Sam's thighs and his cock in Sam's ass feel like the only things, the only real things, in the world, and then Dean wraps a hand around Sam's cock, and he _actually_ comes, he comes so hard that he screams in surprised pleasure, he comes so hard that even over the noise he's making he can hear the frame of the bed creaking and Dean saying, "Yeah, Sam, that's it, just like that, you're so good for me, so pretty when you come on my cock, so fuckin' pretty." 

When Sam falls back, dazed and exhausted, Dean unhooks his legs and they flop bonelessly out, one foot off either side of the bed. Dean is still deeply seated in Sam's ass, and it shifts everything. They both make a low sound, pleasure that's too distant to grasp at for the moment. Dean still rocks up, just for a moment. "I can feel you," he tells Sam. "I'm gettin' soft, and you're still wet and all opened up around me." Then he slides his thighs a little apart and pushes his hand between them, his fingertips slipping around his own cock and Sam's hole, and then slides a finger right in, right alongside his softening cock.

Sam moans, consumed with the idea of Dean fingering Sam's open ass, wet with come, loose and easy. His body is so sated that he just lays there and burns with it, hot and panting, and Dean slides another finger in, which is enough to make Sam stretch a little again with Dean's softening cock still inside him. Sam doesn't do anything but lay there and let Dean do whatever he wants. He feels like he could sleep again right now, just close his eyes and drift off with the feel of Dean still inside him, like that might be the best way in the world to fall asleep.

He makes a small, disappointed sound when Dean pulls everything free at once, and Dean strokes him across one thigh, and then cleans them both up wet wipes, which Sam can apparently identify by smell and texture. He supposes that shouldn't surprise him.

"Put your legs up," Dean says. "Pull them back."

Sam does it. He doesn't even wonder why.

"Good, Sammy," Dean says, "hold still just like that," and then Dean's hand is on his ass, pulling a little, and Sam hears the tiny click this time, and recognizes it. 

"Did you," he asks breathlessly, and he can't tell if he's terrified or turned on or pissed off at the idea.

"They're all on your phone," Dean says. "You can do whatever you want with them when we leave."

Sam doesn't say anything. He works very hard not to think about the picture Dean just took, what it will look like. Dean drags a blanket over him without securing Sam's ankles, and moves away to do things. Sam listens distantly, picking out sounds he recognizes, like Dean disassembling and cleaning Sam's gun, which is familiar and weirdly comforting, and then Dean opening the refrigerator and getting things out.

Sam is abruptly starving, and he'd like to be able to see just so he has some kind of warning about what Dean is going to be feeding him, but he can't worry about it. He's aware of the light, but it's okay now. Sam can't see, and he can't care. He feels like his whole body along with his brain have been turned down to the lowest possible setting, the sound dim and the information not requiring his attention. It won't last, he understands that, too. That's why people do this over and over, to keep coming back to it, to be like this, existing without effort. Not everyone. Dean, he think, gets something different from it, but for Sam, this is the point. This ease. 

He wants to wallow in it as long as it lasts.


	21. 21

He maybe does fall asleep for a few minutes, because the next thing he knows, Dean is sinking down beside him, nudging Sam's hip over a little. Sam's hands are the only things secured, Sam realizes. And that's okay. That's secure enough.

"Open your mouth," Dean says, sounding cheerful. Sam does, and Dean pokes a straw between his lips. Sam drinks icy cold Yoohoo enthusiastically. He can't see Dean smiling mockingly at him, but he can feel it anyway. 

Dean hand feeds him. Sam realizes that he had known that Dean would. That it hadn't been a question in his head.

Sam doesn't know what he expects, but it isn't whole wheat crackers piled with cream cheese and lox, and he moans appreciatively at the first bite. He had bought all those things, but he would have bet with certainty that Dean wouldn't know how to combine them how Sam likes them. He is suddenly ravenous, and his stomach growls threateningly. Dean chuckles and feeds him another cracker, then pauses to give Sam a drink, and it's strange, a mix of domestic and discordant that Sam doesn't really know the feel of, but it's good, too. It's good, and he can feel how it's stretching out that sense of ease, that Sam doesn't have to do this either, doesn't even have to think about it.

Dean caps the crackers off with blueberry yogurt, and doesn't make a single crack about Sam's taste in food.

Dean goes away and uses the microwave, and the smell is so instantly familiar that Sam knows exactly what he's making for himself, and it's _hilarious._

"What are you smilin' about?" Dean asks, and settles next to Sam's hip again.

"I'm tied to the bed, listening to you eat a convenience store microwavable cheeseburger," Sam says seriously. "I knew as soon as you roofied me that there was going to be torture involved."

Dean, who must have been in the middle of a bite, chokes seriously for a couple of seconds, and then is laughing uproariously. Sam feels something he never wants to know the identity of land on his belly with a splat, and cries disgustedly, "Oh my God, I am so glad I'm wearing a blindfold right now!" Dean laughs even harder, one hand gripped above Sam's knee and tight on his thigh.

When Dean finishes his horrible meal and wipes up whatever unidentified half-chewed bit stuck to Sam's belly, he gives them both another thorough wet wiping.

"I'm gonna settle you," he tells Sam. "You want on your back or your front?"

Sam thinks about it for a few seconds. He's tired. He knows he's only been awake a few hours, and he knows that absolutely doesn't matter. He's going to fall asleep without a lot of provocation. "Can I be on my side?" he asks. "I mean, is it possible, with the." He tugs at his arms a little.

"It'll give you a little more play," Dean says thoughtfully. "Is that what you want?"

"Yes," Sam says, and Dean rearranges him for a while, hooking and unhooking and little clicks, until Sam is mostly comfortable on his side. He doesn't even realize until it's done that he has no idea if he could have been partly or completely free at any time. It hadn't occurred to him to think about it.

He doesn't think about the lights, either, until he hears the click of the switch, and then Dean tugs the blindfold away from his face and sets it away somewhere. He folds himself into the curve of Sam's body, and there's some negotiation about whose knees should go where, and Sam ends up curled down a little, his head on Dean's chest. Dean's hand is in his hair.

Dean hadn't taken the collar off of Sam, and Sam hadn't mentioned it.

"Where did you even get all this stuff?" Sam asks, curious but drowsy.

He doesn't expect much of an answer, but Dean says wryly, "At the hardware store."

Sam snorts. After a few silent moments, he asks, "Can I? I mean, will you...?"

"You can ask me anything," Dean says simply, and Sam recognizes the enormity of it, but he still feels soft all over, even his mind folded into soft edges in a way that makes it almost simple to take Dean at his word.

Still, he picks something easy. There are hard things, Sam can sense them, but it feels okay not to talk about those, yet. Dean won't mind. Dean is the last person in the universe to stand in judgment on things Sam doesn't want to talk about, actually.

"How did you know what to get? For me, I mean. Like, like the collar. How did you know that?"

Dean thinks about it. His fingertips slip out of Sam's hair and slide contemplatively along the top edge of the collar where it dips down under Sam's chin. "The collar goes with the restraints," he says finally. "They're not a set, but I wanted 'em all for the same reason. I wanted a different one. I wanted a red one, but you're a big guy. My options were kinda limited."

"Why red?" Sam asks, and thinks about what the red might look like, instead of the black.

"Black is normal. You weren't gonna see at first, but when you did, I didn't want you to be able to miss it, or make it less in your head. Red is a color you can't keep your eyes away from, it won't fade into the background. I wanted that for when you could see it." Dean falls quiet, and Sam thinks he's done. He isn't even bitching in his head about it, because it's a very long, very thorough answer for Dean.

Sam is actually opening his mouth to ask if the restraints are red, or if they match, when Dean starts talking again, totally unexpectedly.

"But I think I mostly lucked out with this one, Sammy. I don't know for sure, but I think maybe I did because it's about how it feels for you. That's how it's supposed to be. About how it holds you still, and it narrows what you can see and what you can do. But it's something else for you. It's something I didn't know when I was buying it. It makes you be still, but it makes you feel safe, too. Like it's okay, like _you're_ okay. And now I know that, but I still don't know if it's any collar, or if it's this one, if it has to do just what this one is doing. I don't know if they had a red one that looked good enough to me, if it woulda done all the right things for you. So, I lucked out."

Sam is gobsmacked. The way Dean relays things has always been indicative about how he feels about them. Dean doesn't even try to hide that about himself, though he normally doesn't talk about most of what he thinks about, so it isn't a pain in the ass for people who aren't Sam.

But this thing, the collar, Dean is grateful. He always takes credit when he feels like he deserves it, he wouldn't be Dean if he didn't think he was mostly awesome, and Dean is abandoning almost all of the credit on this one. He is offering it up to the gods in gratitude, thank ye almighty gods for providing Sammy with a collar that makes him feel like he's okay.

Dean still has his hand resting on the collar, and Sam could probably chase that answer around his head for six hours, he could stretch it to ten if they were on the highway, because he has done a lot more with a lot less.

Instead, he lets himself be grateful with Dean, and for Dean, and manages to only express it by saying, "I like it a lot, Dean."

"I like it, too, Sammy," Dean says easily.

"And the other, the restraints are. To make me be still." In his own defense, he's recovering from the previous answer still.

"A still Sammy is a mostly calm Sammy," Dean says. 

Sam blinks at that. It's funny in the way only Dean saying something insightful in a totally absurd way can be. Sam can see it, he feels a flutter of recognition just at the idea in general. He could chase it down, but he doesn't. He doesn't entirely let it go, either. He holds onto it, puts it where he can look at it later. For now, he just accepts that it's working. Not all the time, but Sam is still adjusting, and right now. Right now it's working just fine.

He thinks about the gun, a flash of it, and turns his mind away from it. He'll think of it later, but he is a still, calm Sammy right now, and he wants to stay this way.

Instead, he says, "What else do you have?" and is curious enough to know the answer that he tips his chin up as much as he can. Dean, with his cat vision, tips down to brush his lips against Sam's, casual. Sam wonders if he'll ever get used to the fact that Dean touches him like this, now, like not only is he supposed to, and not only is he allowed to, but like he always has. Like he's been doing it forever in his head, like it's not a new thing at all.

"Some stuff you'll see and recognize, some stuff you may sort of see the use for, a couple of things you probably won't know what to even call." Dean's voice is lazily amused, and something else. A little teasing, but that's not it. A little eager, Sam thinks. To show Sam what he has.

"Is it stuff, will I like it?"

"Some of it," Dean says, sounding unworried.

"Wait, what?" Sam asks.

Dean shrugs his shoulder under Sam's head. "It's not like the voice o' God granted me supreme understanding of everything in the world that turns your crank, Sam."

Sam snorts again.

"This is how it works. Some stuff. Like, for me, the spanking." Dean's voice tips a little on the word, and Sam smiles in the dark. "I thought the idea was awesome, but it didn't work out. Some ideas are brain melting in your head, but in reality, maybe they scare you, or hurt more than is good, or just plain don't work. And sometimes it really is an awesome idea, but you gotta have somebody who knows what makes it awesome for you, knows _why_ , and that's the only way it can work."

Dean turns toward Sam in the dark. "And some things you barely ever think about 'til somebody says, hey, check this out, and all the sudden you're doin' something that you never in a million years woulda thought might make you crazy."

"Tell me something like that," Sam demands. Dean huffs out a laugh and bumps his lips into Sam's chin.

"You didn't want to know stuff, Sammy," Dean reminds him.

"I never said don't tell me anything you've ever done," Sam says sulkily. "Just. Don't tell me how you learned all this. Don't tell me anything that might make me want to kill anyone." This time Dean snorts, but he kisses Sam again.

"Okay. This was real random, actually. Remember last year in Phoenix, the little brunette with the poltergeist?" Sam does remember; they'd stayed in Phoenix an extra day for Dean to make a move on her. Sam had been more amused than annoyed by it. "She wanted to shave me. She was just for a night, but I thought, what the hell, you know? And it was just a safety razor, she coulda never done more than nicked me if she slipped, but after the first minute of thinking it was just a thing for her, it got really clear really quick that it wasn't just her. I spent most of the rest of the time trying not to come on her face."

"She shaved your pubes?" Sam clarifies, laughing, but still kind of stunned at the idea.

"She shaved everything there was to shave," Dean says, smugly amused. He shrugs again under Sam's head. "It's not a big thing, not something I ever really miss, but yeah. It was pretty fuckin' good, and I'd probably never turn it down."

Sam thinks about that for three seconds or so with a kind of detached fascination, and then his vivid imagination kicks in and he can almost feel Dean under his hands, the way the muscle would move under Dean's skin, and Sam would use a straight razor, fuck that safety razor, Dean can keep still it he doesn't want a nick, although he probably totally does, and then there is a kaleidoscopic shift in Sam's brain and he's thinking of Dean holding Sam's cock up out of the way while he cleans up the hair right at the base of the shaft and the way that Sam would have to be still, or that maybe he wouldn't have to be, Dean could pretty much do it any time he wanted right now, Sam has been pinned down firmly enough already to have a thorough understanding of how still Dean can make him be... 

"Still with me, Sammy?" Dean asks. Sam can hear the smile in the dark.

"So," Sam says, and pretends he was not just having an intensely vivid fantasy involving something Dean had mentioned in relation to odd things you won't think are sexy, but somehow are. "So. You, you bought the variety pack?" He isn't sure if he's horrified or amused at the idea.

But Dean says, "No," so seriously that amusement slips to the wayside. "No, I picked every single thing on purpose for you, Sam. I got things you needed, an' some things I thought you'd like. I got things I didn't have a guess at one way or the other. I got a couple of things I thought you wouldn't like. An' I got one thing you won't like, but I think you might change your mind about, later." He pauses. "An' I got a couple of things for me. Just for me, things I want to do to you."

"But how do you know?" Sam asks.

Dean's hand slides up into Sam's hair and shakes him a little, like he's exasperated. "I know you. I don't know everything there is to know, but I know you enough to guess at a lot of stuff. There's still shit I don't know, that I got no idea about. We'll work it out."

"What don't you know?" Sam wants to know.

"Do you ever run outta questions?" Dean demands. He tucks Sam's head tighter against his chest. "Go to sleep. The fuckin' inquisition can wait."

Sam might argue, normally, but he is still all soft edges, and Dean is warm. "Jerk," he says, and ruins it by yawning in the middle.

"Bitch," Dean says fondly.

***

Sam wakes up because something is tickling at the side of his face. He blinks for a second, processing that it's still dark, that he's still tired, his ass is pleasantly sore, and it's Dean's armpit hair that's tickling his cheek.

Dean is still snoring quietly, and Sam is more or less comfortable. He decides it's fine to go back to sleep, and relaxes, his forehead tucked up against Dean's chest, but then Dean's armpit hair is tickling him again.

He scowls and squirms around a little to find a way to lay that doesn't involve armpit hair, and abruptly bumps into the memory of Dean licking Sam's armpits, and the crazily unexpected hotness of that. He thinks about Dean's shaving story, and then he thinks about why Dean would even think to lick Sam's armpits in the first place, and concludes that it's not unreasonable to deduce that Dean probably likes it.

Sam turns his nose toward Dean's armpit, and, yes, he can smell Dean. They showered, but there was exertion directly afterward, and there is definitely some tangy, sweaty smell, but it's not a bad smell. It's not like Dean after digging and filling in three graves in one night. _That_ is a bad smell.

This is just sweat and salt and musk and a total lack of deodorant, which Sam sees as a good thing. He guesses deodorant tastes like crap. He wriggles around a little more, trying to get into a position that his collar doesn't interfere with, and nudges Dean's arm up a little.

Dean snores softly in response, and Sam decides that's a good thing, too. If Sam hates it, Dean will never even know.

He tries it, cautiously, but not half-heartedly. He doesn't throw himself headfirst into things like Dean does, but it makes sense to treat this as though it's a new weapon, and really give it a thorough try before passing judgment.

It's salty, mostly. Dean's armpit hair is crinkly against his tongue. The skin is unexpectedly soft and warm, and Sam tips his head to find a new patch and feels his cock hardening, and yes, okay, he's good with this. It's an oddly unfamiliar taste, like very strong sweat but also musky, like Dean's cock after it's been trapped in his jeans for awhile, but it's so far from bad that Sam is willing to tentatively call it good, or at the very least interesting. He doesn't stop until he can't really taste Dean at all anymore, just his own spit.

"Nice, Sammy," Dean murmurs, and Sam startles guiltily. Dean breathes out a little laugh and curls his arm until Sam rolls helplessly back over against his chest.

Dean is snoring again just a few seconds later.

Sam bumps his half-hard cock against Dean's thigh, but then sighs and goes back to sleep.


	22. 22

Sam wakes up because he smells coffee.

"Coffee," he demands immediately, and then feels a little like one of Pavlov's dogs. Or Dean. Jeez.

Dean, the jerk, laughs at him from the kitchen corner.

Then Sam blinks, because he can see Dean over there. The light is on, and Dean is nakedly pouring coffee into a couple of blue mugs.

Sam looks around, and notes the absence of all three chairs and the folding table from his immediate line of vision. He is in the process of shifting his body around to look behind him, since he still can't turn his head very far, when Dean says, "Sam."

Sam sees he's standing by the light switch, a mug of coffee in each hand. His elbow, however, is poised over the switch.

He doesn't say anything else, but Sam sighs and shifts back to where he was before. He gets light and coffee, or he gets a brief glimpse of Dean's largely hypothetical, at this point, stash of mysterious sex accouterments.

"Coffee," Sam says, defeated.

Dean smiles and brings him coffee. Sam discovers he can prop himself up on one elbow and drink his coffee for himself with the restraints hooked up to let him lie on his side, and is pleased by this. He has no real objection to being fed by Dean, but coffee is hot, and could result in potentially painful accidents. Although he has to admit, the button -- which is part of a rubbery glove that starts in the middle of Sam's palm and goes up under the restraint on his right wrist -- might pose about an equal threat.

The restraints aren't red. They're black. Sam looks at them for a few seconds, taking in the leather, that some of it looks more like cord or very thin black rope, that something that looks a little like a narrow belt is riding low on Sam's hips, with leather running down the length of the outsides of Sam's legs that the straps around his thighs and calves are attached to, that he still can't immediately see the way anything fastens or releases, and then he looks at Dean instead. Looking at them makes him feel restless, and he doesn't want to feel restless. He wants to have coffee with Dean, and look at him naked.

"Hungry?" Dean asks, and drinks his own coffee. He can't have been awake for very long. His hair is still a little squashed on one side, and it's short enough that it sorts itself out without much help from Dean if he's upright for any real length of time. Dean looks content. It's not just his happy-coffee-face, which Sam has seen plenty of times. He also looks relaxed. His lips are barely tipped up, not quite like he's smiling, but like he's willing to at any moment.

"Not hungry," Sam says, and feels pretty happy, too. He has his own coffee, Dean is naked, and as long as he doesn't contemplate the disaster that his own hair has to be right now, he's content.

"So," he says, after watching Dean drink his coffee for a while. "What are we going to do today, Pinky?"

Dean grins, his eyes crinkling a little at the corners. He resists the urge to say something outrageously Pinky-ish, however, which is fairly unusual. Instead, he says, "I'm gonna do lots of things. You're gonna lay there and look pretty."

Sam blushes. He pretends furiously that he doesn't know it. 

Dean doesn't say anything, but he's still grinning as he drinks his coffee.

Then, as casually as he can, Sam asks, "Are the lights going to be on?"

Dean stands up and walks over to the kitchen corner to get himself more coffee.

"Hey," Sam says, and waggles his own coffee cup within his limited range of motion.

"You don't get any more," Dean says, and now he's smirking. "It'll just make you need to piss." Sam can't really tell if he's outraged or alarmed at the implications of that, probably both, before Dean distracts him. "And, yeah. The lights are gonna be on."

Now Sam can't tell if he's pleased or distressed, and seriously, he needs to get a grip. These are radically different emotions that he can't get a clear read on. He feels like the only thing he's clear on at the moment is that he isn't very clear on anything.

He sees that Dean is watching him, and has been for a little while. "And...?" Sam says. "Why?"

"Because I'm not planning on asking you to show me anything you don't wanna look at right now," Dean says simply.

Sam blushes again, a little miserable about it, and a little ashamed of himself. It isn't that he doesn't know that Dean _can_ think deeply about things. It's that Dean so often doesn't say anything about it, if he does.

"Don't get yourself twisted up about it," Dean says kindly, and then snatches Sam's coffee cup right out of his hand. "This is mostly gonna be just for fun, Sammy."

"There was still coffee in that!" Sam objects loudly, fully aware that Dean is adroitly managing Sam's mood, and willing to go with it.

Dean pauses, looking into Sam's cup as though to verify this claim, and then gulps down the last two swallows.

"So mean!" Sam hisses in outrage, and Dean smirks happily.

He takes both coffee cups back to the kitchen corner, and when he turns to come back, he has a hard on. Like magic. Sam stares. He's allowed to stare. The lights are on, and it's right there. Permission is implied.

Dean pushes at him gently until Sam is mostly on his back, and then swings a leg carelessly over Sam's hip and leans over Sam to do something to Sam's hands. It pushes Dean's cock along the side of Sam's hip, and Sam can see it. The head of Dean's cock leaves a slick smear beside Sam's hipbone, and yes, that is still insanely hot, will continue to be hot until the end of time. 

He could see how Dean is making the restraints work, too, if he wanted. He could look right up and see. He knows Dean won't stop him. He watches Dean's cock leave a wet place at the dip of Sam's waist, instead. Sam doesn't want to know how they work, and is miraculously okay with not wanting to know. The distracting power of Dean's cock in action.

"Lean up a little, Sammy, get your shoulders off the bed," Dean says. When Sam does, Dean leans up a little more, and Dean's cock bumps wetly into Sam's nipple.

"Oh, man," Sam says softly, and Dean pauses to look down. Sam gives Dean a helpless look. He can't see his own wet nipple, the collar won't let him look that far up his own body. Dean looks amused.

"In a minute," he says, and goes back to what he's doing. Apparently, Dean thinks that constitutes an entire sentence. He slides off Sam a moment later, and shoves a duffel against the headboard, and then scoots Sam around so that the small of his back is resting against it. Then he jams pillows on top of it until Sam is lounging comfortably back against it, his arms outstretched, but not pulled particularly taut. Sam can hardly feel any weight at all pulling at his wrists.

Sam approves. He wriggles until he's totally comfortable, and watches idly as Dean rearranges Sam's legs, basically just pulling them out straight, spread just a little, and hooking them to the foot board. It's far enough away that Sam can't see the mechanism exactly, but he can see the way Dean has what looks like a little pulley system going on down there. Like the world's dirtiest Erector set.

It's hilarious until Dean slides a wide leather strap over Sam's thighs, right between the two straps that are already there, and hooks either side to the frame of the bed, and Sam realizes he can't lift his thighs off the bed at all. Like, not even an inch. A quarter inch at best. Dean crawls up between Sam's legs and hooks another wide strap low across his hips, effectively immobilizing his entire lower body.

Dean dips and goes down on Sam just long enough that Sam actually starts hitching up against the leather across his hips, and then pulls off as though satisfied.

"You are a teasing cocksucker," Sam says icily.

Dean snorts, but Sam remains unamused. He feels the statement is entirely accurate. "I'll make it up to you," Dean says, smoky and weirdly sincere, and tucks his fingers behind Sam's collar and shakes him lightly. "I'll show you something good. I'll even let you pick."

Sam perks up with interest. "Is there a catalog?" he asks, faintly amused.

Dean smirks. "I ain't got one on me, Sam. You're gonna have to pick by area of interest."

Sam thinks about that for a few seconds. Dean is watching him curiously, as though genuinely interested in finding out what Sam will say, and Sam is considering the categories Dean had mentioned last night in the dark. Things Sam would need, things he'd like, the no idea section, things Sam probably wouldn't like, something Sam won't like but could possibly be talked around to, and things Dean had got just for Dean. Just because he wanted them. His knee-jerk impulse is embarrassingly Dean-oriented. Like Sam is more interested in finding out what things Dean wants for himself than any of those other, less ambiguous categories.

He tries to talk himself out of it, but he's tied to the bed, Dean _fucked him with a gun_ a few hours ago, and it seems stupid to try to hide it at this point. "Something for you," Sam murmurs finally, feeling his cheeks heat a little.

"Aw, Sammy," Dean says, only a little mocking, and Dean is coloring up, too. Sam is pretty sure it's arousal rather than embarrassment, though, and that makes most of Sam's embarrassment recede.

Dean swings his knees around Sam's waist and knee walks up high enough to reach over the headboard to get to where Sam is pretty sure Dean had moved the table. Dean's cock bumps into Sam's chest, and Sam pushes up into it instinctively. It's not far, there isn't a lot of play in his restraints, but it's far enough to press Dean snugly against Sam's breastbone. Dean pauses to slide, slick and easy, against Sam's skin for a few seconds, and Sam moans a little, at the way it feels, yes, but also at the way he he can see the muscles across Dean's ribs shifting as he rolls his hips lazily. Sam presses his face to Dean's side and bites Dean, scrapes his teeth across his ribs mostly. He's too far away to really get a good bite. Dean shifts closer, like he knows it, and Sam gets a piece of him between his teeth and really gives it to him.

Dean's cock jerks and streams precome in a little runnel down Sam's chest, and Sam makes a breathy, hungry sound at the way he can feel that but can't look down enough to see it, at the way Dean shifts a little more so that he can take advantage of the wetness to shove his cock harder against Sam's chest. It opens up another several inches of skin, and Sam bites down just under the indent of Dean's armpit. Dean makes a quick, harsh sound, and Sam gets a bite of the underside of Dean's biceps as well before Dean pulls back away.

He's sitting astride Sam's thighs and giving Sam a speculative look. "So that turns your crank all across the board, huh?" Dean asks, which could come across as mocking, but instead just comes across as just plain curious.

"You go all sweaty and hot," Sam tries to explain. "And I can see all the places I touched you. And your cock touches me, and you get me wet and I can feel where you touched me."

Dean smiles a little. "That's a pretty fucking persuasive argument," he tells Sam. He cocks his head and blinks, looking momentarily startled, and then smiles widely. "Okay. You get this one for free."

He works his way up Sam until his cock is right against Sam's belly. The side of Sam's cock is pressed warmly to Dean's balls, and Dean has angled it so the head of Sam's cock is bumping against the side of Dean's, is slipping a little underneath, between Dean's cock and belly. He leans in closer, and murmurs, "Good right there?"

Sam nods dumbly, and Dean leans more of his weight down and pins Sam's cock there, just the head, nowhere near as much as Sam wants, but still so good Sam feels stupid with it. Dean puts a hand at the back of Sam's collar and holds him steady, and presses his throat up against Sam's mouth, right under the angle of Dean's jaw. "Bite there," he says, and Sam does, Dean's skin salty and giving under his teeth. Dean twists his hips, and Sam moans around Dean's skin. Dean breathes in stutteringly, and pulls back. Sam holds on for just a second, and then lets go.

The mark on Dean's throat is bright red, and he doesn't have the head of Sam's cock trapped between them anymore, but it's so wet with Dean's precome that just the feel of it poking Sam in the belly when he inhales and sliding frictionlessly against his own skin makes Sam shiver.

Dean shifts upward, his cock dragging up Sam's ribs, and leans in to press a collar bone right up against Sam's lips. "Here," Dean says, and Sam bites, feeling the hard line of bone under his teeth, the way the skin is taut and stretched across it. Dean's hips roll again, deliberate and messy, and he holds Sam's mouth in place with the hand on the back of Sam's collar and moves his whole body to one side, dragging Sam's teeth along the length of his collar bone.

When Dean pulls back, there is the circle of Sam's teeth, and a long line of shallow scrapes, deep enough to look raw. They aren't actually bleeding, but they look like they're about one layer of skin away from it. Sam stares at it and breathes heavily. Dean shifts a tiny bit and raises his arm, pressing the edge of his armpit against Sam's mouth, that stretch of muscle between his arm and his chest. Sam remembers Dean biting him gently there sometime before, yesterday? Sam doesn't care what day it is.

"Right there," Dean says, and Sam bites, tastes that strong sweat musk a little stronger than it had been last night. Dean rocks his hips this time, so it's just the head of his cock bumping at Sam's ribs. Sam can't see it, but he's betting there's a thin runner of wet stretching from Dean's slit to Sam's skin every time Dean rocks back enough to lose contact, and Sam whines a little, feeling overheated and buzzing-headed.

Dean pulls away and shifts up so there is a nipple right in front of Sam's face, but he doesn't lean close right away. Instead he pushes his cock high up against Sam's belly again and just rides against his skin for a few seconds. Dean has his head tipped back and is breathing through his open mouth. He is indeed all sweaty and hot, and Sam can see his mouth all over Dean, several carefully directed bites, and the idea that Dean is showing him a kind of map, giving up all the places where Dean likes it best just for Sam, makes Sam feel crazy and possessive and grateful all at once.

When Dean does lean in, he shifts to the side and drags the tip of his cock along Sam's nipple, his spine rounded a little to make it happen like that. Sam moans, and Dean whispers, "Here," and Sam bites the little nub once, hard. Dean breathes out harshly. Sam tips his head enough to get his bottom teeth lined up with Dean's nipple, his top teeth set against muscle, and bites down. Dean gives a little cry and jams his cock up against Sam's chest, and hooks the crook of his elbow around the back of Sam's collar and holds him right there. Dean makes soft, hot little "ah, ah, ah," noises that make Sam want to come right now, and if he could come hands-free, like Dean, it would be all over.

When Dean pulls back this time, there is reluctance in every line of his body. It makes Sam feel smug and desperate to know that he did that, he made Dean like that even though Dean is calling all the shots.

There isn't that much more of Dean he can easily get to, and Sam is feeling hungrily disappointed until Dean shifts up and gets his feet under him, both hands braced on the headboard behind Sam for balance. His stomach bumps up against Sam's chin and his cock bumps up against Sam's collar. Sam has no earthly idea why that should be hot, but it somehow is. He huffs out several breaths against Dean's belly, and Dean says, "Belly button, right at the top," and that is also inexplicably hot, and Sam bites down obediently. He can see Dean's hips through his slitted eyes, the muscles there flexing, as he holds himself up and bumps his cock into Sam's collar, and he can feel the soft skin of Dean's belly under his teeth, the muscle underneath hard and taut, but the upper curve of Dean's belly button is soft like the curve of a woman's breast, defenseless. Sam moans, and Dean makes a low noise in counterpoint.

Dean shifts up without warning, dragging Sam's teeth away sharply, and Sam sees him push his own cock down a little and angle it under Sam's chin to get his hipbone up against Sam's mouth. Dean sucks in a breath before Sam does anything at all, his cock dragging a little at the underside of Sam's jaw, and Sam realizes he must be stubbly, and has brief, momentary vision of sitting on Dean's legs and giving him a serious case of stubble burn all over his cock. 

"There," Dean says, deep voiced, and Sam's mouth is poised over Dean's hipbone, but he tips his head up a tiny bit and goes for the soft, thin skin right at the hollow, rather than the bone itself. Dean moans, thighs flexing, cock dragging under Sam's jaw, and Dean pulls away fast again, like the feel of Sam's teeth closing and snagging on the last bit of skin is what he's after.

Sam tries to make a mental note, but is seriously uncertain if he's even capable of mental anything right now.

Dean slides his cock up right against Sam’s cheek from head to base, he does it twice, almost silently, though Sam can see the way Dean's mouth is open and his face is flushed and his eyes are blown wide. Sam's mouth is open, he's not sure when it happened and doesn't care, and he watches Dean pull back and push down at the base of his cock until he's sliding it between Sam's lips. Sam closes his mouth around it and sucks hard, uses his tongue and tries to undo years of habit and just let Dean scrape across his teeth. Dean takes short, quick breaths and pulls back until the head of his cock is just barely inside Sam's mouth, Sam's top teeth grazing the head.

"Nobody will bite your cock," Dean tells him, low and tight. "Nobody. They just won't believe you."

Sam bites down carefully, not gently but increasing the pressure by slow increments until he finds the right execution of force, enough that Dean's hips are twisting a little but not dangerously, enough that Dean is making a low sound of needy pain deep in his chest. He can feel Dean's cock twitching out little spurts of precome across Sam's tongue, and realizes he's making a sound not unlike the one Dean is making. "Let up," Dean whispers, and Sam does it at once, and Dean pushes his cock into Sam's mouth again, spreading the taste of his precome hotly across Sam's tongue. Sam moans, he can't help it, and Dean pulls out and pushes the whole length of his cock across Sam's mouth. "At the base," Dean demands, and Sam bites and isn't surprised when Dean pulls slowly back, dragging the length of his cock along the ridges of Sam's teeth. Sam licks along between his teeth with the tip of his tongue, and Dean makes a hot little sound of surprised pleasure.

When he pulls back, he just shifts around to the other side and says, "Again," and Sam does it again, except this time Dean actually thrusts a little, or rocks, enough that he is unmistakably dragging Sam's teeth along places he's already been scraped. The needy pain sound in Dean's chest has moved up into his throat enough to become a soft whine, and Sam can feel Dean smearing precome along his cheek, which is hot, but he can also feel it dripping right out of Dean's cock to splash against Sam's shoulder, which is _incendiary_.

"Let me suck you," Sam whispers, "let me, let me," and Dean shifts and pushes into Sam's mouth with shallow, hard thrusts, three, four, so good Sam is reeling with it, not deep because the angle isn't good enough, but if Dean could lean forward a little more Sam could probably manage it anyway, five, six, and Dean is talking like he does, apparently helpless not to talk when his cock in Sam's mouth. 

"Good, yeah, like that," he gasps out. "Jesus, Sam, you, you, so good, so, you, you _make me insane_ ," which sounds a lot like an accusation, and an admission, and then Dean pulls out of Sam's mouth and Sam lets out a high, unhappy protest.

Dean sinks to his knees and moves back until he's straddling Sam's slightly spread thighs, and Sam intends to attempt some other persuasive argument, but he never gets to it because Dean arches his back and plants a hand behind him on the bed between Sam's legs, and wraps the other around his own cock, squeezing hard. All the spit in Sam's mouth dries up as Dean's head rocks back, and Dean twists his hand up around his cock in a slow, hard stroke that Sam understands serves no purpose other than to let Dean really feel the scraped burn Sam's teeth had left along the length of it. Dean isn't trying to come, it's too slow and his wrist and forearm are flexing up and around with the way he's twisting his hand, he's just riding against the pain of it, a fairly small pain because Sam had been careful, but big in Dean's mind, full of that pulsing need that builds when you've wanted something a long time.

Dean's thumb hooks hard across the head of his cock, and precome streams down the curve of Dean's knuckles, oh, Jesus Christ.

Sam can see all the marks he had left on Dean, and Dean is glassy eyed and panting, and Sam's whole body is aching with abandonment, but he feels good, he feels happy, satisfied. Dean looks is beautiful, devastating. Sam has never seen Dean hurting _himself_ before, and it's brutal and captivating.

Dean gives himself five strokes, like he decided before he ever started, five, slow, long drags of his tight, twisting hand, though the last two Dean shudders through, back arching more, hips pushing his cock up through his fist so that they're less strokes and more thrusts, and he isn't making any sound, not even breathing, his face is dark with heat and lack of oxygen both, his eyes are wide and sightless and Sam wonders if Dean had looked down and watched Sam drag his teeth along Dean's cock, and knows he did, of course he did, and that is what is playing behind his blank eyes, the white of Sam's teeth, the dark red skin of Dean's cock, the bright, almost-fire feel of the pain.

When he stops, when he opens his hands and takes a huge, whooping breath, he drops both hands onto the bed above his own knees and fists them there firmly. Sam thinks sadly that he would have licked that off Dean's hand, he would have loved it. Dean's breath is rattling unsteadily, and his head is hanging down. Sam can see the flushed back of Dean's neck and the edge of the bite mark at the hinge of Dean's jaw.

Sam's breathing is worse, frantic and panting, and he doesn't want to fuck up Dean's pain-afterglow, he really doesn't, but he is still begging softly, "Dean, Dean," and when Dean finally looks up, "Give me, give me."

Dean gives him a hot look, but says, "No, no more for you." He immediately makes it a lie, though, dips down and licks at Sam's cock. Sam can see he has his own little precome pond in his belly button, and Dean licks it away, dips his tongue in, then tongues all around the head of Sam's cock until it's shiny and Sam is quivering with the desire to grab Dean's head and push his mouth down Sam's cock.

He works his mouth up Sam's body, not as methodically as the last time, but this time Sam can see the way his tongue curls up and over Sam's hipbone, the crease of Sam's thigh, the vee of muscle that slants down into Sam's groin, scrapes his teeth along Sam's other hipbone. It isn't until Dean moves his mouth high enough up that the collar prevents Sam from actually watching Dean's tongue curl pink against his skin that he realizes that Dean's hands are all over him anyplace his tongue is not, splayed across Sam's thighs, his thumbs aligned with both hipbones at once, sweeping arcs across Sam's belly and then cradling Sam's ribs, fingers slotted between the ridges while Dean licks Sam's nipples out of Sam's sight, while Sam imagines what it looks like and makes helpless wanting sounds and moves into Dean's hands and mouth in the fractions of inches allowed him. Dean licks up from Sam's nipple to the bottom of the collar and all the way around the front edge of it while his hands shape Sam's chest, his shoulders, the length of his outstretched arms. Dean scrapes the bottom of Sam's jaw with his teeth and pushes his hands into Sam's hair and kisses him, a brief dip of tongue, and traces the shape of Sam's lips with his tongue, and then with his own lips, pausing occasionally to slip his tongue into Sam's mouth and lick at his tongue, so quick Sam is just gasping and trying to catch Dean's mouth with his, he wants more, he wants a hard kiss, he wants and can't do anything about it between the collar and Dean's hands in his hair.

He feels knocked out of true, dragged along in the wake of Dean's hands and his mouth, and he thinks how they haven't done this, they have never, not in the light. In the dark, yeah, here, Dean has done some, and then even earlier than that, just a little, but this _touching_ , neither of them have done this in the light, and Sam can't think why, he can't understand why he hasn't touched and kissed and loved every inch of Dean just like this, why he hadn't done it the first time, why he hasn't done it every time they've had ten minutes together, and Sam has been thinking so hard about how much Dean likes pain that he'd somehow lost sight of the fact that Dean also likes pleasure, just pleasure, warm hands and warm mouths and warm skin. 

Dean slots their mouths together firmly, finally, and kisses Sam, his hands in Sam's hair and on Sam's shoulders and all over Sam's chest again, thumbs dragging at Sam's nipples, before they creep up to cup Sam's face for two seconds and then tangle in his hair again, and Sam is kissing and moaning into Dean's mouth, soft and wet and open for Sam, sweetly searing, perfect and hungry and his.

"Something for me," Dean says right up against Sam's mouth.

It's not quite a question, but Sam answers anyway. "Yeah, yes, for you," he says, panting against Dean's mouth. "Touch me, for you, Dean."

Dean kisses him again, brief but deep, and then leans above and over Sam again. He promptly knocks something over, and Sam is perversely pleased by it. No more stealthy silence for Dean. Whatever it is sounds heavy and hits the top of the table with a flat smack. Full bottle of something, Sam posits, guessing by the sound. Something bigger than a tube of lube. Unless it's a really big tube.

He doesn't have time to make any more guesses. Dean grunts out a sound of annoyance and sets whatever it is to rights with a thump, and then slides back down to straddle Sam's hips. He drops a leather circle onto Sam's chest and a small white box.

"That's two things," Sam says automatically.

Dean smirks. "One for me, one for you."

Sam ponders both of them for a long moment. The leather is a cock ring. It's not the same one Dean had been wearing before; that one had been slim and made of something smooth and round against Sam's tongue, something not metal or leather. The small white box had had a label affixed to it at some point, but it's been torn off. Sam can see bits of paper and adhesive on the top of it. It's about the size of a paperback book, or a little smaller, and made of plastic. He's curious to find out which thing is for which of them, but he doesn't ask.

Instead, he asks, "What do I do."

"Nothin'," Dean says. "I'll do everything."

"Okay," Sam says.

Dean picks up the cock ring and twists around. The quick, practiced way he scoops up Sam's balls and slides the leather right underneath causes Sam a momentary splinter of jealousy, and then Sam remembers that Dean hasn't actually done any of this with a guy before, which means he knows how to do that because he's done it to himself. The image of that is enough to banish anything other than the hot, easy way that Dean draws the leather up around the base of Sam's cock and pulls it snug. Sam hears three snaps click as Dean secures it.

Sam's cock jumps and jerks when Dean lets it go, and it feels abruptly harder than it had five seconds ago, which should be physically impossible. It feels a little like it's trapped, and Sam can feel the edge of the leather pressing against the base of his cock, but mostly it just feels like he's been given a set of simple, silent instructions. That he's supposed to be hard, to stay hard, and he's not supposed to come. He can't be sure that's actually what Dean means by it, but that's how it feels. 

Sam feels himself flushing hotly, and decides that the cock ring is for him, for Sam, that it's like the collar, it's about how it makes Sam feel.

Dean is watching Sam and looking pleased, but he's also looking hard and hungry and a little tight around the eyes. Sam thinks that look is about whatever is in the box.

"Show me," Sam says, voice unexpectedly deep, because anything Dean wants enough to look at Sam like that is probably going to be fine with Sam.

Dean picks up the box and just holds it for a few seconds. "This you can say no to, Sam," Dean says seriously. "You don't gotta use your button for this, you can just say, no, that's not okay." He locks eyes with Sam for a minute, until Sam nods. Then Dean opens the box with a little plastic snap, and turns it around and tips it forward so Sam can look inside.

There are needles inside. Just six of them. They look like syringes without the part that holds the blood or drug. They each end in a bit of black plastic, and each one is sealed, sterile. There are some things under the needles, alcohol swabs Sam thinks, and something a little bulkier under that, but he's really occupied with the needles.

Needles are not in Sam's sex equation. Needles have never even made an appearance in Sam's sex equation, not even fantasy equations, not in any way. Needles are not sexy.

Sam glances at Dean, who is looking back. Dean's eyes are hot, but his face is carefully neutral. If Sam says, no, that's not okay, Sam is sure Dean will answer with, 'that's okay, Sammy,' and he will sound like he has the other times he's said it, as though he is genuinely okay with it, like it doesn't matter to Dean one way or the other.

Except this does matter to Dean. Sam can see it. Dean is dripping precome on Sam's belly and eating Sam with his eyes, and he will not make Sam do this, but he definitely wants to.

"Where?" Sam asks, because the only thing that could be a deal-breaker at this point is if Dean wants to jab him in the cock with his six needles, and even then. Even then, maybe.

But Dean reaches forward and slides a thumb across one of Sam's nipples, and Sam cock jumps, a hot coil in his belly constricts and knots up. He can feel both of his nipples go tight and pebbly, and Dean watches it happen, his neutral expression sliding right off his face. "Jesus, Sam," Dean says heatedly. 

"Yeah, do that, do it," Sam says, because pierced nipples are pretty fucking hot, and it changes the context, that, that Dean wants to do that to Sam, even just temporarily, even though it will probably hurt, but they're just needles, so what the hell, it's not like Sam hasn't had far worse, and the look on Dean's face, that look, that. "Do that for you," Sam murmurs.

Dean doesn't have to be convinced. He tips two needles out and sets them on Sam's belly and adds a few alcohol wipes, and then pulls out whatever bulky thing had been in the bottom of the box, and it's a little packet, Sam sees, a fine-linked steel chain in a sterile packet.

Sam's cock jerks again, and Sam's face is hot and he can see that in his head, the details a little fuzzy, but the general result, Sam's nipples strung together loosely by that chain, and his head actually falls back, he can't look at it for a few seconds, he stares at the Devil's trap on the ceiling and pants through his open mouth.

"Jesus, Sam," Dean says again, and Sam hears him tearing open one of the alcohol wipes.

"Wait," Sam says, "I can't see!"

Dean pauses and stares at Sam for a second. "You want to see?"

"Yes, I want to, fuck, Dean." Sam shakes his head as hard as he can in the confines of his collar. "Fuck, I want to see."

Dean wordlessly reaches behind Sam and unbuckles the collar and sets it beside Sam's hip on the bed. Sam looks down at his own nipples. They're still tight, and there's another sterile packet sitting right under them. Sam can see blue inside it, and after a second he realizes they're gloves, like medical gloves.

"No," he says.

"No, what?" Dean says, holding the half-torn open packet of the alcohol wipe, and looking at Sam with a mixture of frustration and arousal.

"No gloves," Sam clarifies. "No gloves, your hands." Dean opens his mouth, and Sam is going to punch Dean in the face if he gives Sam a safety lecture, he'll save it up for later when he has the use of his hands, but he totally is. "It has to be your hands," Sam insists. "You can hurt me, I will let you do whatever you want," Sam breathes, "but do it with your own hands." Dean closes his mouth.

He leans forward again, and comes back with a tube that has the word sanitizer on it, which is all Sam sees before Dean puts the swab packet down and uses what looks like half the tube, and then drops it on the bed below Sam's collar and sanitizes the hell out of his hands.

"This is a little risky," Dean says, but his voice is so deep and smoky that Sam can tell it's how Dean wants to do it, too.

"I've had your blood in my mouth," Sam says, and Dean's hands clench briefly, but he just reaches for the swab and pulls it out of the packet and swabs both of Sam's nipples thoroughly. It's fucking cold and smells sharp and astringent, and the little cloth is nubby against Sam's nipples, which seem to have gained a few hundred additional nerve endings than they usually have.

Sam watches Dean tear off the corner of the sterile packet that the chain is in, and then tip it and give it a shake until one of the ends comes loose. He doesn't shake it all the way out, just flips the loose part of the chain up and on top of the packet, and lays it right in between Sam's nipples. Dean picks up one of the needles and pops it open.

Sam is breathing through his clenched teeth and his cock is a long, dense ache lying across his belly, and he is amped up on terrified, aroused anticipation.

He watches Dean thread the needle through the end of the chain, and sidle slightly upward, shoulders canted a little. "Deep breath, Sammy," Dean murmurs.

"Fuck you," Sam grates out feverishly. "Fuck you, put it in."

Dean looks at Sam's face for a long moment, and licks at his bottom lip. Dean looks alert and competent, but Sam can see all that hard-edged lust swimming around behind that expression, and it makes him want to bite Dean or lay back and spread for Dean, or both, he can't tell, he's too hot to figure it out. Then Dean tips his head down and tweaks Sam's nipple up and gets it between his thumb and forefinger, grabs at the outside edges of it and pulls it up, so the nub of it is above his fingers and he has plenty of room.

"Sam," Dean says, and puts the needle to Sam's skin firmly enough that Sam can feel the sharpness. "Be still."

Sam lets out a breath and forces his body loose, and Dean pushes the needle into Sam's nipple without any further warning. Sam clenches his teeth, it definitely hurts, but it's a small pain. Dean's face is intent, focused, and Sam mostly watches the length of the needle slide through his nipple, aware of the sharp stinging burn, but distantly. Most of it is just the way it looks, the bead of blood where the needle is going in, then a little more blood when it pushes out the other side. It trickles down Sam's chest and is immediately smeared by the dragging edge Dean's finger. Dean doesn't stop when it's through, he pushes it until it's a little more than halfway down the needle part. Dean pauses there, and lets go of Sam's nipple. A bright pulse of pain centers there for a second, and then fades into something more like discomfort. Dean's fingers hover there, motionless, and then he uses the tip of one finger to push the plastic part upward just a little, until the little chain slides down and comes to rest against Sam's nipple. It's so light, Sam barely feels it at all, but a pulse of heat replaces that discomfort and stomps all over it until it is barely even there.

Sam sucks in a breath, lets his head fall back so he isn't looking at it for a second. He's a little freaked out at how much he likes it, how the pain seems almost totally irrelevant. It's how it looks, it's how that twists in his head, and he's okay with it, not upset, but he's surprised and just a little freaked out. Then he sees Dean, who is not looking at Sam's face, for once. He's staring at Sam's nipple, all the focus completely gone, and what is there is a sharp, hard satisfaction.

Sam has seen Dean's want in a lot of ways, and this one is new, but Sam knows it. He recognizes it. This is for Dean what seeing his teeth marks on Dean's skin is for Sam. It's hot and Dean loves it, and it's about those things, but the important thing about it is that Sam can see it. For Dean, it probably isn't quite about seeing it, more just knowing it's there, that he did it, so it's real in Dean's head. Even if he never gets to do it again, he will have it to keep. Something he wants just for himself.

He thinks about all of Dean's supplies lined up somewhere behind Sam's head, and he knows, he _knows_ that somewhere hidden in Dean's duffel is whatever Dean would need to make it permanent, make it real forever. Not for now. For now Dean will ask for this other thing, a placeholder that is better than nothing, but not what he really wants. Sometime down the road, though, when Dean is more sure of not just Sam's answer, which would probably be yes, regardless, but of how Sam actually feels about it. Whether it would be good for Sam apart from the way it's good because Dean wants it. 

Sam thinks about putting his teeth at the place where Dean's neck meets his shoulder, the first place Sam had broken skin. He thinks about doing that every day until there is a scar. 

Something happens in Sam's head, a series of lightning fast connections, at the same time that he feels himself tip a little out of his head, easily, without effort, into contentment. It isn't what it was last night, where he was still and easy and sated. Sam's cock feels huge with want, and his skin is prickling and needs to be touched, and there is nothing in the world he can imagine that would be better than Dean sliding the other needle through Sam's unadorned nipple and then fucking Sam for about four hours, but he's content with that want, too. It's urgent, jabbing at the base of his spine and fiery in the cradle of his hips, but it's okay to wait for it, too.

It's okay. He's okay. Whatever happens is okay.

Dean's gaze finally tips up from Sam's nipple to Sam's face, and Sam watches his eyes widen for an instant, and then he smiles, tiny and tender, his eyes filled like cups with quiet kindness. "Hey," he says, soft. "Hey, Sammy, you restin' easy?"

"Yes," Sam agrees, because that is exactly what Sam is doing. Sam is resting easy.

"That's good, Sammy," Dean says, and pops the other needle out of it's packaging, like it's not a big deal even though Sam knows it is. He feels it, and he can see it even with Dean's face tipped down so he can thread the needle through the other end of the chain, he can see how Dean looks a tiny bit surprised and a tiny bit relieved, but mostly just happy, just _glad_ that Sam is resting easy.

Dean gathers up Sam's other nipple and glances back up at Sam. Sam looks back. He still feels like he's boiling inside his own skin, and his mouth is a little open, breathing hard, he's filled up with hunger, and he is still resting easy. Dean does it left handed, even though he's a righty, and Sam isn't surprised because they can both aim almost anything with either hand, it's a survival trait in Winchesters, and Sam is just glad because his view isn't hindered by the curl of Dean's arm.

It hurts even less this time, maybe because Sam knows that he likes it, it makes it like the first burn of being fucked, and Sam tries to keep his chest still as he pants through it, and halfway through Dean's simple, glad expression melts into that same edged satisfaction, and that just makes the whole thing better. When the needle pushes through the other side, two drops of blood fall on Dean's thumb, and as soon he gets the needle positioned how he wants it, Dean tucks the side of his thumb against his mouth and absently sucks it away.

Sam moans, and Dean's eyes flick hot up to Sam's face and then back down so he can tip the chain up against Sam's nipple. He puts two fingertips on Sam's breastbone and trails them down, neither soft nor hard, until they catch on the chain, and the resultant burst of pain is so bright and sharp it doesn't even feel like pain, and it must be like this, for Dean, it must be like this all the time. Sam can't even manage a moan, just wide eyes and an open mouth, and Dean moans roughly for him.

"I didn't think you'd like it," Dean tells him, and does it again, just the smallest drag against the chain. Sam groans this time, his hips rock up a little, the leather of the cock ring flung abruptly into the front of his mind so that he ends up gasping and twitching a little all over. "I thought you'd let me, at least once, but I didn't think you'd like it." Dean's eyes go from Sam's face to Sam's nipples and back like Dean can't decide what he wants to watch. 

"You can keep it," Sam tells him, invites him. "You can have it to keep, you can do it right now."

Dean chin tips up sharply eyes hot with surprise, and he grips Sam's shoulder very hard, fingertips drilling into the muscle under the skin. "I... I can't right now," he says, so tightly it's almost a snarl.

"Yes," Sam says. "I know you have what you need, I know you, you can have it to keep. I want you to have it to keep, Dean."

Dean's hand goes so tight that Sam whimpers a little, and Dean's face is almost as tight, like Dean is in pain. His grip eases after a moment, but his face doesn't and he curls his spine to carefully avoid Sam's chest and kisses Sam's jaw and his mouth. His voice is a low, pained sound when he speaks. "Sammy, I _can't_ right now, you're in no shape to say yes and know what the hell you're saying."

Sam is sure that he knows exactly what the hell he's saying, but he understands why Dean thinks he doesn't. He's a little disappointed because he'd like Dean to have this now, it would make him happy to give it to Dean right now, the first time so it never has to be a placeholder in Dean's mind, but it's okay.

"Okay," Sam says. "I know what I'm saying, but it's okay. You can wait. You can do it whenever you want to."

"Sam," Dean says, still sounding pained, and tips his forehead against Sam's cheek. "Sammy, sweetheart, I've _wanted_ to for years. It ain't about that."

Sammy, sweetheart.

Like they mean the same thing, or, or like they always go together like that, in Dean's head.

Sam smiles a little. He's okay, it's okay even if Dean doesn't know he said it out loud.

"I know it isn't," Sam says softly. "I don't know all your rules, but I understand consent, I get that you think I'm under the influence of sex and can't give you clear consent."

" _Informed_ consent," Dean corrects. "You don't even know what you're saying okay to. What if I want two pound weights, for Christ's sake."

"You want little barbells with black beads. Or maybe small circular barbells. With black beads." Dean pulls back to look at him. "I know you," Sam says placidly. 

"Even so," Dean says. "Even so, Sam, what seems like a good idea right now might kinda suck for you if you hate it later."

"If I hate it later, I'll take them out," Sam says. "But it's okay. It really is. I know your rules matter to you. I'm okay with however you want to do it, whenever you want to do it."

"The rules are to keep you safe," Dean says quietly.

"I don't need to be kept safe from you."

Dean leans away, settles back at Sam's hips. The curve of his ass presses lightly against Sam's cock, and it feels good, even great, but Dean's expression is uncertain, a little frustrated. He tips his chin down toward his chest, and sits still and Sam starts to feel not okay.

"Don't be upset," he says, and can hear how he is not okay in his voice, though he can't really define what is it.

Maybe Dean can hear it, too, because he looks up immediately and plants a hand splayed across Sam's stomach, as if to steady him. "I'm not upset," Dean says, easily enough that Sam believes him. "I'm just thinkin' a minute, but I can do it later if you need me to."

"That's okay," Sam says. "You can think."

Dean doesn't put his chin down, this time, he just stares at Sam's nipples with his gaze slightly unfocused, looking distant. Sam occupies himself with the way the chain between his nipples shifts a fraction when he breathes. It doesn't hurt, but he can feel it like he can feel the cock ring, like he can feel the curve of Dean's ass, right up at the front of his brain. He flexes his chest experimentally, and that hurts, different from the way the needles had felt going in, kind of burning and dull, not sharp, and not as good as Dean touching the chain, but not bad, either.

It really is just about a minute or so.

Dean says, "Sam," and Sam looks up from contemplating his nipples. "I'm already breaking the rules, here. I been doin' it since the start. Just not telling you what I was gonna do before I knocked you out broke about half of 'em. The ones I'm still keeping are mostly because you don't know stuff about _you_ , yet. I see you figuring it out, but you gotta look at it, all of it, and know what's there. People that know what they got in their heads ain't dangerous, Sam. It's people that don't ever look at it, that keep stuff in the dark, that could hurt you or hurt theirselves. That's true the whole world over, but it's more true doing this. I need 'em until we both know what's in your head. Once that happens, I'm willing to rethink 'em." 

"Okay," Sam says, because he understands. The rules make this okay in Dean's head, he remembers Dean telling him it was okay to do whatever Sam needed to do to make it okay in his own head, so he understands. "It's okay, I'll be good."

"You're not being bad, Sammy, it's nothing to do with good or bad. You're just being Sam. I don't want you to be anything else."

"No, I know," Sam says, smiling. "I mean I don't want you not to be okay, either. I don't want you not to do things how you need to. I didn't mean to. I just wanted to give you that, I could see you wanting it. I just wanted you to have it. Not something else that was close to keep in its place in your head."

Dean gives him a steady look, and then a tiny, rueful smirk. "It was more like a teaser than a replacement," he says. "I was gonna wait, but not that long. How'd you know that, Sammy?"

"You told me I could say no, so. So, it mattered to you that I didn't." Sam says. "And I just recognized it on your face. I. I want to bite you and leave a scar." He flushes a little, but Dean actually looks both amused and impressed. 

"You know how hard you'd have to bite to really scar me up?" he asks, grinning a little.

"I don't want to do it like that. I want to bite you in the same place, every day, until it's just there." Sam pauses. Dean's amusement fades. He looks a little more impressed and a lot more turned on, and Sam loses any and all embarrassment and discovers he actually wants to tell Dean, it's important. "I don't want a perfect set of teeth marks, I want a ring of them, so when I see it and when you see it, when anyone sees it, it looks like what it really is, that I bit you again and again and again, on purpose, that you let me do it, that it's there on purpose."

Dean sweeps everything on Sam's belly off into the little plastic needle box, closes it, and then shoves it half under a pillow under Sam's back. Sam can sort of feel the corner of it. Dean leans forward and grabs Sam's neck and just slams his mouth into Sam's, and while Sam is distracted with that, does something to the chain that is sharp enough with pain that Sam cries out into Dean's mouth. Dean kisses him harder and sucks at Sam's bottom lip, and Sam gasps because Dean is doing something, Sam can't tell what, something that doesn't quite hurt but makes Sam insanely, intensely aware of his nipples, the needles, the chain, something good that has Sam moaning in under ten seconds and hitching his hips up uselessly, something so good that Sam is only distantly aware that Dean's cock is poking him wetly in the belly.

Dean doesn't stop doing it when he stops kissing Sam, to say, "I can't believe how much you like it, I never woulda fuckin' guessed it, Sammy, this is why you gotta try everything at least once, man."

"What're you..." Sam moans, and tries to tip his head down and kind of to the side so he can see, but Dean kisses him again. Sam shouts with pain when Dean tugs or jerks or something sharp, and then Dean is doing it again, it doesn't hurt but it feels like his fucking nipples are vibrating or, or attached to a very low voltage electric fence, or, he doesn't fucking know but it's so good he's whining. Dean drags the chain up between his nipples and then higher so that Dean can hitch himself upward and drag his cock along Sam's belly. It gives Sam another moment of clarity in which to say, "How're you doing..." before Dean starts doing it again, slightly different because of the angle, because Dean moved the chain up, and then Sam is moaning into Dean's mouth again, Dean is riding against Sam's skin and making Sam wet nearly all the way up to his chest, but, except, with intent, like Dean is getting off on this so hard that he is planning on just rutting up against Sam until he comes, and Sam shudders and arches his back, which is the only thing he can do, the only way he can move even a little to help Dean. 

"Yeah, Sammy, yeah," Dean moans out hotly, and licks Sam's lip and does whatever he's doing to Sam's nipples that's making Sam's skin feel too tight and too hot. "Is it like fire, Sammy, tell me," Dean pants against Sam's mouth and then bites off the shout Sam gives when he pulls at Sam's nipples, and doesn't start whatever else he's doing, like he knows Sam can't answer him while he's doing that.

"No, I don't, I don't know," Sam tells him, gasping and stammering, he feels _stupid_ with it, not pleasure, not exactly, Sam doesn't know, Sam has no idea what it is. "No, it's not, I don't. It, it doesn't hurt, exactly, or feel good, like, it's just big, it feels big, like it's the only place, and--" Dean starts doing it again, and Sam stops talking but his mouth is wide open, so he gets to hear himself moan so loudly that surely neighbors somewhere are calling the police and reporting a noise disturbance, and Sam doesn't care so much that he doesn't stop, and Deans hips are snapping hard enough against Sam's skin that his whole body is jolting with it. Dean stops doing it again, and Sam says, "Dean, Dean," and sounds so strung out and helpless to himself that he's a little alarmed.

"Sammy, listen, you gotta calm down a second," Dean pants, like Dean hasn't been responsible this whole time for Sam losing his mind, like Dean isn't still thrusting so hard against Sam that the bed is creaking and Sam can feel the muscles in Dean's thighs shuddering against Sam's ribs. "You wanna bite me, Sammy?"

"Yeah, I..." Sam says dumbly, because the answer to that is always pretty much yes.

"Where do you want it?" Dean demands, and then licks Sam's mouth, which is distracting and Sam tries to lick back until Dean says, sharply, "Sam! The scar, where do you want it?"

"You," Sam says, "I, on the, your, as the first time," which is apparently enough description because Dean shifts up a little higher and shows Sam his throat, and Sam licks at it helplessly, his nipples are sharp little aches now, he is sure that they're going to be very sore later, but right now they're tight and hard and it isn't whatever Dean had been doing and it isn't pleasure, but it's good, it's hot, and Dean's neck is salty and jumping with muscle under his tongue.

"Get it lined up, Sam," Dean grinds out, and some of Sam's brain must come back online because he can hear in Dean's voice that he's close and it's clear that Dean is waiting for Sam to bite him, and okay, Sam finds the spot he wants with his tongue and licks carefully to be sure he won't bruise anything vital, and then sets his teeth into it gently, waiting, but as soon as he's got it Dean says, "Yes!" in a way that is emphatically an instruction, and Sam bites down and Dean starts to do the thing again and it's even better, like the pause made it even bigger and Sam's eyes roll back and he groans and Dean shouts, "Oh, fuck oh fuck oh fuck, Sammy, fuck fuck fuck," until Sam actually tastes blood, and then Dean stops killing Sam and just moans low and hard and long and comes all over him.

Dean holds himself up somehow, doesn't just collapse on top of Sam, but Sam is so dazed and panting he doesn't really notice until he feels the curve of Dean's ass settle against his cock, and then all he can do about it is throw his head back and breathe hard and try to stop his skin from quivering right off his body.

"I take it back," Dean says hoarsely. He's breathing hard, too, and he props himself up with a hand against Sam's belly. Sam would tell him that is probably not a good plan considering how wet he is from the breastbone down, but it's too much effort to try and say it while breathing. Sam looks down, and his nipples are very red, but look otherwise normal and not like they feel, which is good because they feel huge. "That thing I told you you wouldn't like, I take it back. You'll like that one." Dean still has the chain between his finger and thumb, and Sam can't believe how tiny it looks, it doesn't even seem possible that something that small could do much of anything.

Dean's fingers release the little chain and move up, and Sam watches them until he can't see them anymore, and then feels them under his chin, tipping his face up. Dean is looking at him, so Sam looks back for a second, and then he looks at the bloody bite on Dean's shoulder, right at the graceful curve where it meets his neck, and then he follows a trickle of blood down Dean's chest to his nipple and the soft gold of Dean's skin, lit up with slick sweat, like Dean is a little radiant. Dean tips Sam's chin up again, a little further, so that he can't see Dean's skin, just Dean's face, Dean looking at him all warm and Dean's mouth is a sweet curve, his eyes are bright. Dean is beautiful like sunsets, like one of God's natural wonders, and Sam is happy just that he gets to look at Dean all the time, whenever he wants.

Dean's thumb touches Sam's mouth, warm and a little rough with callouses, and sweeps it across Sam's lips to his cheek. Dean's fingertips slip into Sam's hair behind his ear and sit softly there, where Sam can barely feel them except in tiny pulls when Sam breathes or Dean breathes. Dean slides his hand down along the side of Sam's neck, fingertips slipping along in Sam's sweat. Dean curls his hand there briefly, his thumb brushing below Sam's Adam's apple.

"Sammy, you restin' easy?" Dean asks gently.

Sam murmurs something reassuring and senseless, he's fine or he's good, something like that, it's not important, it's just so Dean knows Sam can hear him.

Dean looks pleased and pushes his hand back up Sam's neck to cradle his jaw. "You restin' deep, Sam?" he asks. He's smiling a little, happy crinkles at the corners of his eyes that Sam thinks about touching, the tiny, soft texture of them on his fingertips. They would feel nice, Sam doesn't know why he didn't know that. Dean is made up of touchable places Sam hasn't touched yet. Sam can touch Dean anywhere he wants to when Sam's hands are his again, and he can look at all those places now. Dean doesn't say anything for a while, he looks at Sam and touches Sam's face. Sam smiles so Dean can touch his crinkles if he wants to, but Dean touches the corner of his mouth instead, and Sam thinks touching the corner of Dean's mouth would be nice, too. 

Dean leans a little and Sam watches him pick up Sam's collar and Sam tips his head back so Dean can tuck it into place, smooth and soft inside, slipping a little against Sam's skin while Dean does the buckles.

"Sammy, do you need anything?" Dean asks, and kisses Sam's ear softly.

Sam already has everything there is to need, and Dean must know that because he says, "Just stay right here. Just rest right here, Sam."


	23. 23

Dean goes to the kitchen and drinks some coffee. He watches Sam, and Sam watches him back, and after a few minutes Dean brings his coffee over and shares it with Sam. It's good, even though it's only warm and not hot, and Dean is careful so it doesn't drip down Sam's chin. He takes the empty cup back to the kitchen and comes back and curls his hand around Sam's cock.

It isn't that Sam forgot so much as it hadn't seemed that important, but Dean's hand makes it immediately important, and he's been hard a long time, Sam is hurting a little with it.

"Sammy, can you tell me if you want me to let you be, or if you want me to take care of your cock for you?" Dean looks serious, like Sam actually might choose to stay hard and a little hurting. Sam thinks about why you might do that, and can come up with some reasons, playfully mean reasons, teasing reasons, things that might be good, but none of those seem pressing. He wants orgasms more than he wants those things.

"Take care of me," he says, and Dean gives him a brief, gentle stroke that brings Sam's attention fully to his own cock, a heavy weight of ache and want. He shifts his hips restlessly, and then remembers he can't do anything, and relaxes again. Dean leans to kiss Sam's mouth with his mouth sweet and open and wet.

"Stay right here, if you can swing it," Dean says when he pulls away. "Just rest here. I'm gonna be right behind you, but you won't see me for a minute, okay?"

"Okay," Sam agrees. He closes his eyes to wait for Dean to come back, conscious of his cock throbbing and aching, and gradually realizing that his whole body feels like that, hot and wanting, and his nipples are sore in a way that is both bad and good at once, and there are still needles, there is still the cock ring. He hadn't forgotten any of it, but it had retreated for a while, become distant, and now that Dean has pulled his attention back to his body, Sam can still feel everything, but it feels like boiling water moved to the back burner to simmer. It's there, and could be made to boil again in only a few seconds, but for the moment it's just a low, even heat.

He can see, even, how that simmering could be good, that constant almost-hurtful arousal. He thinks that's what Dean meant, not teasing, just left to simmer a while, just stirred maybe every now and then, to keep everything hot all over.

Sam is like soup. He smiles.

"I'm soup," Sam tells Dean as soon as he appears again.

Dean blinks at him. "You're what?"

"I'm soup," Sam repeats. When Dean just blinks again, Sam explains about the simmering and the stirring and Dean starts to smile a little.

"You sound baked," Dean says, and swings a leg over Sam's thighs. "You been hittin' the bong, Sammy?"

Sam scowls. "Making _butter_ ," Sam reminds him.

"No mocking from you, or I'll leave you to 'simmer' a few hours, and I won't let you make any butter, either," Dean says.

"So mean," Sam sighs, but watches Dean's stomach flex and tighten as he moves a little up, Sam will put his mouth there some other time. Sam moans when Dean wraps a hand around Sam's cock, unbidden and unrestrained, and then he sees that Dean is pulling Sam's cock up straight and there's a little line of concentration between Dean's eyebrows, and Dean is lining Sam up, and he says, "Dean!" and isn't sure if he wants to encourage Dean or beg Dean or dissuade him, Dean could hurt himself, Dean could...

"Hush, Sammy," Dean soothes, and brushes the tip of Sam's cock deliberately along Dean's ass. Dean is slick, and when Dean lines him up Sam can feel that he's open a little, and Sam thinks about what Dean had been doing when Sam couldn't see, and it's harder that way, to do it yourself, but Dean knows how big Sam is, he knows and just thinking of Dean opening himself up is making Sam's head swim.

"Be careful, be careful," Sam whispers, but he wants it so much, he wants to watch Dean sink down on his cock, wants to watch Dean ride him, all of Dean's skin on display.

"Just rest easy, Sammy," Dean murmurs and braces a hand on Sam's stomach as he eases down and Sam's body ignites like gunpowder is dusted and sizzling across his skin. "Shh, Sammy, I got you," Dean murmurs, and Sam realizes he's making an open-mouthed whining sound and Dean is watching him keenly, though he is still flushing hot across his face and chest, his biceps bunched, and he goes so slow, so slow Sam wants to see, he wishes he could see. Dean reaches up and catches the chain strung between Sam's nipples, holds is up enough that Sam can see him spin it between his fingers until it's taut, all the links twisted, and then Dean just keeps twisting and for a second Sam is clear that it's the link the needle is strung through, it's turning over and over from the tension on the chain, it's bumping against the needles, that _that's_ what Dean...

Then he's just moaning again, still, he isn't sure, he is hot all over and Dean is half on, half around him, Dean is like fire inside and as wet as a girl, Dean was careful when he, Sam's nipples are points of radius, like little shocks that ripple out across the rest of his body and Dean is another point, Sam is triangulated, and it's better than anything he's ever felt in his life, it's like coming unraveled from the inside. 

"Dean," Sam says, his voice a soft slur of sound, a long curl around Dean's name.

Dean murmurs, "I got you," again and Sam just pants open mouthed and watches Dean sink slowly down, stays loose and still and lets Dean have him this way, too, he will let Dean have him all the ways, but this way is so good he can't imagine not having it before. Dean's body is a tight, hot rush, it sends tremors through Sam's easy muscles, makes him briefly tighten again and again, helpless to stop it, helpless for the feel of it when Dean tightens in response, hot clench around his cock and Dean's body all taut and lovely, until Dean is all the way down and Sam can feel Dean shuddering, too, can see him flushed and wet, open mouthed and his eyes open just in slits, Dean overcome with some soft thing that Sam realizes is almost purely pleasure. Dean had made himself loose enough that he is hardly hurting at all, stretched around Sam's cock, that it's almost all just good, that full stretch and the faint burn, the way it feels to be filled up, and Sam is still moaning, or is moaning again, he can't keep track. Dean twists the chain up again, his hand fallen back to Sam's chest where he can't see it, but he feels it so much he can't be quiet, he doesn't think to try, and Dean murmurs a soft sound, encouragement.

Sam can't thrust, can't even twist his hips up, and once he tries and is sure that he can't, he doesn't try any more. He lies there, he burns with it, the pleasure and the helpless way he is spread out for Dean to have, and he sees Dean looking at him too, roaming, hungry gaze on Sam's chest and his face and the long lines of Sam's arms, and after a little while, Dean's thighs flex, his belly tightens, and he lifts himself a little carefully and lets his own weight drag himself down those few inches, experimentally. Dean's head falls back and he shakes all over, like it's a surprise, a new good surprise he hadn't been expecting. Sam tries to stay quiet as he can so Dean can have what he wants from this, it's so good Sam can barely breathe, but it's Sam's cock and he knows how to use it, and he could tell Dean something good if Dean wants it, he doesn't know if Dean wants that or if Dean just wants this to have, so he stays quiet and burning and gasping helplessly as Dean lifts and doesn't just fall this time, but pushes back down with slow deliberation, deliberate. Dean's face goes even more dazed and he rocks his hips just a little, and Sam doesn't have to tell him anything, Dean figures it out and leans a little forward, makes the angle between their bodies acute, and arches his back so that when he pushes back onto Sam's cock he tightens and shudders with the angle, the best angle, and Sam moans and is still and lets the shuddering clench of Dean's body around Sam make him stammer and moan out senseless pleasure sounds

"Sam," Dean moans, "Sammy," and the sound of Sam's name is enough to set Sam shivering again, Dean's voice curled with pleasure and breathless with wanting, and Dean abandons the little chain to brace both his hands against Sam's ribs, and stays angled forward where he is dragging all the way along the length of Sam's cock, making Sam tighten and shudder with every stroke, tight and hot and surrounded with Dean. Dean is beautiful when Sam fucks him, the most beautiful thing Sam has ever seen, but when Dean rides him, he is all grace and sinuous motion, not fighting whatever it is he's been told not to do, just rocking hips and flexing thighs and the hot tension from his forearms to his biceps, the ripple of his abdomen and the hard, stark line of his throat as he rocks his head back and moans out loud with no fighting it, no bites of sound or choked off noise, just panting that builds steadily into a hot, helpless spill of Sam's name and reverent profanity and the way he gets more confident, more force and more twist to his hips and his thighs go taut and quivering and his elbows bend a little more and he arches his back and he fucks himself on Sam just for that sharp drag across his prostrate, not for Sam at all, Sam is incidental, but for the hot arc of it that makes Dean tighten and clench roughly, incidental, until Dean loses all his ease and physical grace and is just pushing and pushing back, breathing hard and making short, wanting moans that make Sam's thighs shudder, too. "Can you, like this, Sammy, can you come like this, inside me, does it have to be...?"

"After," Sam says, he's sure, he wants that hot, slick wet feel of Dean emptying his cock into Sam, but he doesn't have to have it just like that, not all the time. Dean reaches behind him and jerks at the leather encircling the base of Sam's cock. The snaps come free with a series of little pops, and Sam's cock is huge and heavy and needful, and Dean leans back just a little, like he wants that quarter inch he couldn't get at before, and then leans again, pushes back onto Sam with his mouth a wet ‘o’ and his eyes closed and fluttering.

Dean takes his own cock in his hand, and Sam hears himself moan and watches the the way Dean doesn't even stroke himself, just shoves back onto Sam's cock hard, twice, and comes with a helpless sound, like he doesn't even know what to do with that much pleasure, and Sam comes, too, without even twitching his hips, just a hot, immediate rush of pleasure that coalesces abruptly, the heat and want spread out across his whole body twisted and pushed into that space to spill up into Dean and make Dean even wetter around Sam's cock, so Sam feels how slick and good it is, and Dean's hips jerk a little, twist, Dean's face open and artless in pleasure, a little stunned and Dean doesn't know, no one has ever told him, but his body knows and keeps up that tight pull and flex of muscle that makes Sam's orgasm feel dragged out of him, so it goes on and on and on until Sam is limp and helpless and loose.

He doesn't go to sleep this time. He watches Dean's hands slide to either side of the bed, bracketing Sam's ribs, and Dean bends double to press his forehead to Sam's chest, just barely below the needles. Sam thinks a little wistfully that if his hands were his, he could touch Dean's neck and feel the sweat there, darkening the hair at the nape of Dean's neck, run his hands down the slick plane of Dean's back. It's barely there, though, that small want, and he hardly wants it for himself anyway. He wants it for Dean, who is still shivering a little. Sam wants to soothe Dean's skin into stillness.

When Dean finally looks up at Sam, he still looks a little drunk with pleasure, and Sam smiles at him and wants to kiss him and just _wants_ him so much, and it still feels just fine to want that and just look at Dean, to have that much and wait for the rest of it to come when it comes. Dean shifts and pulls off Sam's cock with a tiny wince, and he doesn't even ask this time when he swings his legs over Sam and stands up. He just gives Sam a long look, and then disappears behind the bed for a minute or so. When he comes back, he's carrying one of the chairs with him. He puts it down next to the bed, disappears again, and comes back with a packet of wet wipes, which he then uses to clean Sam up to within an inch of his life. Sam is over-sensitive, he squirms a little when Dean wet wipes his cock, but his whole skin is super-sensitized as well, so he squirms almost as much when Dean scrubs at his belly and the smears of blood on his chest. Dean recovers the white box from under Sam's pillow, and the tube of hand sanitizer and the cock ring, and transfers them all to the chair.

"You," Dean says, his voice a little hoarse, "are a fuckin' great ride, baby brother."

Sam's mouth drops open in surprise, and he flushes a little. Dean gives him a sharp little smile, and leans in to kiss him, long and easy and sweet.

"I'm gonna get a beer, you want?"

"Yeah," Sam says, and if anything, his voice is even raspier than Dean's. "Don't roofie it."

Dean smirks, but he just gets up and grabs a couple of beers and brings them back. He twists them open and tosses the caps in the trash in the kitchen.

He tips the bottle to Sam's lips and dribbles beer carefully into his mouth until they figure out exactly how much Sam can handle in one go without it running down his chin. When Sam's had about a quarter of it, Dean sets it on the chair and then just stands beside the bed and drinks his own all in one long pull, head tipped back, throat working as he swallows. Sam will put his mouth there while Dean drinks a beer at the very next available opportunity, but it's nice to watch, too.

Dean tosses his beer bottle toward the trash in the kitchen; it goes right in, effortless.

He pops open the little white plastic box and opens an alcohol swab and cleans up the bite on his shoulder without seeming to notice or care about the sting. He can't really see it, where it's positioned, and when he disappears again, Sam knows he's in the bathroom corner, inspecting it. When he comes back, Sam says, "You should bandage it."

Dean gives him a considering look, but then disappears again and comes back with a gauze pad and some adhesive tape. Sam watches him cover the bite with a little pang, but it's for the best. Sam is going to put his mouth there every day, and human saliva is full of bacteria. It's best to keep it as clean as possible in between times.

Dean swings a leg over Sam again and settles across his waist. Sam is immediately aware that he needs to piss, but it's not urgent.

"Sammy, you thinking straight right now?" Dean asks, watching Sam's face intently.

Sam considers this. "Not straight," he finally decides. "I'm not confused, I can think, but my whole brain isn't working. Like I've only got limited access."

Dean's face is a weird mix of things Sam isn't really up to decoding. He looks pleased, but a little sad, too. "If you can still string together words like 'limited access,' I figure you're mostly thinking straight, and it's good that you ain't thinking that much," Dean says. "It's good for you to rest easy awhile."

"Okay," Sam agrees, because he recognizes how still he feels, how calm. Resting easy. A still, calm Sammy. This is what Dean wants for him, he's pretty sure, and it's good. Sam wants it, too.

"I'm gonna take the needles out, Sam. This is gonna sting."

Sam has mixed feelings about Dean taking the needles away, and it must show on his face, because Dean reaches up and pushes his hair away from his face. "It's not the pain for you, Sammy," Dean tells him.

Sam is surprised.

Dean smiles a little and shakes his head. "I know it looked that way, from where you're sittin', but, the needles. Was it how they felt, or how they looked?"

"How they looked," Sam says, and feels his belly start to simmer a little at the memory of it. He doesn't have to think about it. He'd known that while it had been happening. "And how you looked."

"And with the chain, did it _hurt_ , Sam?"

Sam is a little less sure of that. Dean's hand disappears from Sam's line of sight, and Sam guesses he's twisting the little chain right before the feel of it hits him, and he lets out a little wail at it, it's even bigger, it's even _more_ without the hot need of the rest of his body to distract him. Dean stops almost immediately, and Sam just looks at him. Definitely not pain. It does hurt a little, but no, not that.

"It’s just sensation," Dean tells him. "You're never gonna like big pain, Sammy. You ain't wired for it. But little stuff, little strappings," Dean smirks a little, "and there's other stuff, stuff made just for this. A soon as I get my hands on a tens unit, baby brother, I'm gonna blow your mind." This time Dean's smirk is huge and satisfied.

"What's a tens unit?" Sam asks, a little peak of curiosity spiking up out of his low, steady calm.

"I'll explain it later," Dean tells him. "I'm gonna take the needles out. It's gonna sting like a motherfucker. You want it fast or slow?"

Sam would shrug, but it's not really practical at the moment. "I don't know."

Dean smiles faintly. "That's fair," he says.

Sam can't see it, but Dean has apparently decided to go slow. Dean watches Sam's face as much as his own hands, and Sam can feel himself flushing at the low drag of pain as the needle is pulled free, and he might not be wired for big pain like Dean is, and this definitely does hurt, but Sam likes the way it feels, the relief from the low-grade ache almost as good as pleasure, and he likes the way Dean looks even more, all sharp satisfaction. For variety, or maybe just so Sam will have a point of reference, Dean slides the other one out wickedly fast, and Sam gasps a little. That nipple throbs faintly. Well, they both throb faintly, but that one throbs more. Dean watches, thoughtfully, and then sits back and tips the chain off the needles. He puts the chain back in the box and takes the needles to the trash and tosses them in.

Sam is inexplicably sad to see them go.


	24. 24

Dean carefully helps Sam drink some more beer, and there's a minor mishap, and Dean laps up the trickle that escapes the corner of Sam's mouth with a low chuckle. Sam can feel the corner of Dean's smile against his lips, and it makes him smile, too. They make out for a while, Dean's hand a little rough in Sam's hair, Dean's mouth affording Sam a low hum of gentle contentment.

"Listen, Sam," Dean says after he pulls back. His face is still close to Sam's but he tips Sam's head a little anyway. "You need to piss?"

Sam nods reluctantly, and Dean runs his thumb along Sam's lower lip and kisses his eyebrow. Sam messed up, before, he didn't hold up his end of the bargain, and Dean had been very clear on the consequences of that.

"Don't look like that, Sammy," Dean says, and swings a leg over Sam again, leaning up to tuck Sam's face into his neck. "Don't, it's gonna be okay. I just wanna ask you something first."

"Okay," Sam says thickly, and then because Dean's neck is right there, and he can't quite help it, Sam licks the salty skin of Dean's throat. Dean doesn't do anything to stop him. He holds Sam's head steady with a hand around the back of Sam's collar and waits until Sam manages to stop on his own.

Dean pulls back just a little, their faces still very close. "If you don't think too hard, I think it's gonna be an easy question, okay? Don't try and force it if it don't come pretty quick."

Sam nods anxiously, and Dean leans in and kisses him again, until Sam forgets to be anxious with Dean's hands on his face and stroking along Sam's arms and his ribs, comfort touching, Sam understands, nothing about sex, all about soothing, and that's almost enough by itself to soothe Sam, just knowing that's what Dean is doing, touching Sam just to calm him.

Dean pulls back again, but still keeps his face so close to Sam's that even Sam, with his extremely limited range of motion, could tip their lips together if he wanted to. "Sammy, can you tell me why it's good for you to be tied down."

Sam hadn't been expecting any question in particular, had not really been holding any expectations at all, but he still blinks, because he knows Dean already knows the answer to this question. Dean had told Sam. "A still Sammy is a calm Sammy," Sam says, echoing Dean without thought.

Dean smiles a little, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Don't I know it," he says a little wryly. "And I knew it already, that part, but can you tell me _why_? When I make you be still, why does it make you be calm, too?"

Sam thinks about that. He doesn't not know, not exactly. He feels it and doesn't know how to say it. "Is it important?" he asks Dean, and thinks about telling Dean that the collar makes it so he doesn't have to hold his head up, and wonders how to explain that.

"Yeah," Dean says, and tucks Sam's face into his neck again. "We gotta know, we _both_ gotta know exactly, 'cause, Sammy, sweetheart, we can't take this rig on the road. We can't have it to keep, 'cause if it was just there all the time, I just ain't strong enough not to do it, not to use it, and it ain't safe. You know it ain't."

Sam hears himself make a small, unhappy sound, and his throat feels tight and thick. Dean pushes his fingers into Sam's hair and kisses the side of his head.

"I can still make it happen, you and me can still do this, but it's gonna have to be something you can get out of, Sam, and if you and me both know _why_ it works, if we know _exactly_ what you need, we can work with that. I can figure a way, I promise you, but I gotta know, you gotta know." 

"Can I keep my--" Sam says before his throat locks up tight, and he feels panicky and hurt and perilously close to tears.

"Sam," Dean whispers, and he sounds upset, too, his voice a little unsteady in Sam's ear. "Don't, Sammy, don't. We don't gotta talk about it now, later is fine, you're okay to rest easy, try and rest easy."

Sam realizes he's straining, his hands fisted and his arms bunching, his whole body twisting in his restraints, and that Dean thinks it's the same, that it's like the first few times, that Sam is freaking out. Dean doesn't have any reason to think otherwise, and Sam is going to have to calm down and try and explain it, because Dean is right. They can't take this with them, so they have to find out how to make it work without it.

"I'm okay," Sam says, and he really isn't, he can hear the wet, rough sound of his own voice, and by the way Dean's hands tighten in his hair, Dean can hear it, too. Dean kisses the top of his head hard.

"I maybe did fuck this up," Dean says thickly. "I thought if you had it to keep in your head, all of it like this, Sammy, I thought you could find it there, easier, that's how I did it, how, for years, Sammy, I'm sorry--"

"Shut up," Sam says, and lacking any other way to make his point, snaps his head up and smacks Dean in the chin with the top of his head. "Shut up, you didn't fuck anything up, shut up, I know why it works, I just have to figure out how to say it, and shut up, Dean, you did _perfect_ , you--" 

"Okay," Dean soothes, "okay, hush, it's okay, just calm down and quit pulling at it, please, Sam, just be still, let it help you be still."

Sam makes himself stop pulling, but he does it for Dean, to help Dean be calm. "I'm not trying to get out of it," Sam tells him after a minute, when both of them stop breathing hard. "I... I wanted to feel it still there. That it's still... solid."

Dean pulls back and looks at Sam. Dean's eyes are a little red, and there's a deep line between his brows. "I can make it more solid," Dean tells him with such certainty that Sam doesn't doubt him, even though he's having a hard time seeing how it would even be possible.

"It's okay," Sam says. Though. He manages a small smile. "Maybe later."

Dean kisses him; Sam can taste how relieved Dean is, or maybe just feel it in the way Dean kisses.

"This was right," Sam tells him when Dean releases his mouth. "If I never get it again, I'll always be glad I got this."

"Fuck that," Dean says sharply. "I figure we can swing it once every two or three months, the works, long as we're careful, and we can do some of it any time we want." He scrubs at Sam's cheeks with his palms. Sam lets Dean eliminate the evidence of his tears without mentioning it. He sighs. "I didn't mean to fuck up your..." Sam sees Dean groping for a word for a moment, then decide on, "...afterglow."

Sam shakes his head. "You can give me more afterglow later," he says, and lets his head fall back so that the collar supports his weight. "Can I keep my collar?" he asks.

Dean pauses for a long moment, and Sam can almost read his mind. It limits Sam's vision, the buckles wouldn't be quick to get undone in an emergency, it could seriously handicap his aim. "Yeah," Dean says finally. "Okay."

"We can get some snaps for it," Sam says, and Dean lights up for a few seconds, his grin a beautifully welcome sight. 

"Okay," Dean says softly. "You wanna tell me now? We can do this later. We got time."

"Now," Sam says, because he's pretty sure he'll lose his nerve if he doesn't do it now. Because it's not enough to tell Dean how it makes him feel, not really. Or maybe it would be, or would've been if he could have answered Dean's question right off the top of his head, but now Sam is thinking about it. Now, Sam can see it clearly enough not only to be able to articulate it, but also enough to see why. And Sam already knows Dean's deeply seated psychological trauma, so it seems only fair.

"I know exactly where I'm supposed to be," Sam says, a little unsteadily. He's hyper-conscious of Dean studying his face, but he doesn't look back, just lets his head loll back against the back of the collar. "I know because I can't be anywhere else. I'm where I'm supposed to be because it holds me there, and if it's holding me there, that's where I should be." 

Sam is fully aware of the circular reasoning, but he knows it doesn't have to make sense anywhere but in his head, and to Dean. And Dean is already nodding.

"I need that," Sam says, even more unsteadily now, "because I never know where I'm supposed to be. Not so much when I was a little kid, but when I got older. I never was the right shape to be a Winchester."

"Sammy," Dean says, sounding hurt, which is bad, but sounding _surprised_ , which is worse.

"Just let me," Sam says. "You and Dad were the way Winchesters were supposed to be shaped. You knew what you were supposed to be doing all the time, you were soldiers, both of you, happy to be that. Knowing where you were supposed to be. I wasn't shaped like that. I knew it, I could feel it all the time. I was never going to be a good Winchester soldier. I thought too much. And that's not an insult to you or to Dad. It's just the way it was, good soldiers don't always ask why. Dad knew that, even I knew it, and I was just a kid. And when I started really coming, not just backup in the car, I was always out of step. We both knew it, even you knew it, you know it right now and won't ever say it. Dad and I fought, and fought, and fought, and I knew things he wouldn't listen to, and he knew things I wouldn't listen to, I _hated_ the way he wouldn't tell us stuff, and it got so bad I, I. I was afraid I was going to get one of you killed, I wasn't going to be where I was supposed to _be_ , and one of you would die, and I didn't. I couldn't. So. I was always good in school, and it was easy to be even better. I decided to do it, and then I made it happen, I got out of your way. I went to a place where people who ask why about everything are supposed to go, and I picked something to do that would give me a lot to ask why about, and I thought that would be enough."

"And then I came and dragged you back..." Dean says quietly.

"No," Sam says, and doesn't look at Dean at all, lets his head fall to the side a little. "No, Dean. I was good at it. College, I mean. I was smart and determined the way Winchesters are." He smiles a little, but he's not amused. "And for the first year or so, I was going to make it be like it was supposed to be, I was going to make it where _I_ was supposed to be. It wasn't right, I wasn't shaped right for Stanford either, but I thought I could be. I thought time would make it work. I wasn't even looking for anything, it hadn't even crossed my mind, it just fell into my lap."

"What?" Dean asks, but Sam can tell Dean already thinks he knows. And Dean is right.

"A woman in white," Sam says. "And then. I. I knew too much not to do something about it, and so I took care of it. And that. It was so _easy_ , Dean. I knew what to do, and afterward I came _home_ and studied and had a beer and went to bed, and I felt good. For awhile. And the second time, it was deliberate, your basic haunted house story, but it turned out to actually be haunted, and I knew where to look for what I didn't know, so I took care of that, too. And then."

"You just kept on," Dean says neutrally. "Figuring shit out, finding it, taking care of it all alone." 

"There was a balance," Sam says. "It wasn't perfect, and I knew I was killing myself doing it, but if I could have both, if I could just be the right amount of both, I _almost_ felt like I was where I should be. I probably would've ended up dead if not for Jess. I'd have just got sloppy with exhaustion, and something would've got me."

Dean sucks in a breath, but doesn't say anything.

"Jess didn't make me right. She didn't magically make me what I was supposed to be. It wasn't a perfect solution to a complicated problem, but I knew _where_ to be, for Jess. I could... put some of the rest of it aside. I still went out. Sometimes. But I knew where she wanted me to be, and I loved her enough to want to be in that space for her, to try and make that enough. I wasn't settled, not entirely, but I thought maybe I could learn to be."

"And _then_ I came..." Dean says, low and harsh.

"We are not talking about Jess," Sam says, as gently as he can. "But, Dean, I wanted to go, when you came." And that's the honest, painful truth. "I wanted to. I wanted just to see you, just because I missed you, but I also wanted to... to see how it would be, to hunt with you. I don't know what I wanted, exactly, to know. Maybe just if I was Winchester-shaped now. Maybe I thought I could tell if I could be in step with you and Dad, if I wanted to be. I don't know, and it doesn't matter now. You didn't drag me, Dean. You only asked me. I said yes."

Dean is silent for so long that Sam finally gives in and looks at him. Dean is looking back, gaze just a little unfocused, like it had been earlier, but it narrows in on Sam almost as soon as Sam turns his head. Dean doesn't ask him any questions and there is no recrimination in his face. Sam is grateful, and only a little surprised. He knows Dean well enough to understand that there is a quiet kindness to Dean's silence on the issue. This is Dean letting Sam tell just what he wants to tell, and no more.

Then Dean does surprise him.

"I know why you weren't soldier-shaped," he says. "I know why you ain't like me and Dad, Sammy."

For a long moment, Sam just stares at him. Dean looks serious, but not upset. He's just looking at Sam, waiting to see if Sam is going to ask, willing to never say another word about it if Sam doesn't ask.

Sam is Sam. He always asks. "Why?"

"Soldiers don't need to know much to do what they gotta do. Soldiers ain't the big picture guys. Dad was never a big picture guy. He was waging a little war. You and me are still waging his little war, but we're doing other stuff, too, and we'll keep on doing it when we're through with what Dad started. Dad was in charge because he was our Dad, not 'cause he got appointed by the Joint Chiefs. Me, I'm the same. I was the same. In charge 'cause I was older, 'cause I had more experience. How'd we get our last ten jobs, Sammy?"

Sam blinks, thinks about it for a few seconds, and says, "Two were leads from Bobby, one was from Ellen, the vengeful cat was you, and the rest were leads from me."

Dean nods easily. "What about the ten before that?"

Sam frowns, but tallies jobs up obediently, all the way back to thirty, because Dean clearly has a point. "Two from you, one from Bobby, seven from me."

"Ten before that?"

"Six from me, three from you, one from Bobby. Dean, what's your point?"

"How do you even keep all that shit in your head?" Dean asks.

"I just do. It's important to know where we've been and what we've done, it's why Dad kept a journal. Information is--" 

Dean nods. "You're a big-picture guy, Sammy. You ain't a soldier. You're a Captain or a Colonel, or whatever. It don't matter what you call it. It pisses you off when I say you're smarter than me, so I ain't gonna point that out, and it's besides the point anyway. The point ain't how smart you are. It's how big you think. People already call us for help, Sam, people that never did before. Bobby helped Dad, and he's helped us, too, but when Bobby gets wind of something bad, he calls us. Ellen calls us, and she's got a whole bar full of hunters. Hell, a coven of white witches call us. That ain't 'cause of me. Even if we ignore that part of it, that's still nineteen out of thirty jobs you set us on, Sam, and that sure wasn't Bobby with his fuckton of mystical hoodoo books doing math in fuckin' Norse and building traps outta understanding why shit works, and inventing binding and banishing rituals for animal spirits from Egyptian lore nobody in this hemisphere has read in a hundred years, and pulling Lilith-is-a-moon references outta his ass."

Sam feels like he should be saying something, and can't actually come up with anything.

"All of that's true, I can make a list of other stuff if you want, but even all that ain't the important part," Dean says, and smiles faintly. "It's that if I ask you, you know what to do, Sam, and if you don't know you find out, and if you can't find out everything you figure out something from what you got, and even if you got nothin' you always figure something out. You got about six tracks on your brain goin' at all times. I probably couldn't even think in your head, it's so busy all the goddamned time. You been in charge of us for at least ten months, Sam, 'cause you're just better at it than me. I didn't even have to say anything. You just picked it up when I stopped doing it."

"We're partners," Sam says, and feels weirdly off-balance for the first time since the two of them started sleeping together, like this situation is precarious in some way he isn't quite grasping.

Dean cuffs him gently on the side of the head. "Course we are," he says, and the simplicity and sincerity of Dean's tone sets Sam at ease immediately, completely. "And when it's something I know, or something you know I'm better at, you step back and let me do what needs doing. You can see how you and me are different, and which one of us should be up front. It never pisses you off that I'm better than you at some shit, 'cause you think big-picture. You look at what I can do and what you can do, and you see how it'll work best. Me and Dad, we worked pretty well together, but he was still my Dad. He wanted to protect me, and he trusted me with his back, but he was still my Dad. He picked the jobs and he always went in first. It was never any other way. It got a little more even, the older I got, but it was never gonna be equal. Sam, you and I ain't the same, but we hit equal less than two months in. We been in step, baby brother, you and me, it works the way it's supposed to work between us. You ain't never been anywhere but where you was supposed to be, doing exactly what you was supposed to be doing."

Sam doesn't know what to say again. He is rendered bizarrely speechless by just hearing Dean _say_ so much, and he recognizes the difference, he sees why Dean can talk here, like this, how he can say so much and have it be okay for Dean, but it is still so new that he doesn't really know how to put it in his head, how to classify it under Dean and have it fit there. He even understands that for Dean, this doesn't count as talking about his feelings. They're talking about Sam's place in the world, really, and they're talking about work, and they're talking about sex, and Sam gets that those things are all real things in Dean's head, things he can cite references for and knows exactly how they work, even when he has to struggle to put the right words to explain it. Not like feelings, which are subjective and ephemeral and hard to verbalize sometimes even for Sam, who doesn't have to have the same kind of structure of reality that Dean does. Sam gets why this is okay for Dean, but it still feels almost surreal. 

And it isn't that he doesn't believe Dean. Presented with Dean's easy list of facts and sound logic, Sam believes him. He'll believe Dean more, once he has some time to really think it through, but his knee-jerk belief is enough, Dean's obvious understanding that doesn't just point out how it's been working, but illustrates that Dean has _known_ how it's been working for a long time. That he probably hadn't even realized that _Sam_ didn't know already.

Dean watches him for a little while, like he knows Sam has to let the information settle a little. Then he says, "You're better at this than Dad was ever gonna be. You ain't like Dad, but that ain't a bad thing. That's just a thing. You ain't even like Bobby. You're like the best parts of both, and you're twenty-fuckin'-three, Sammy. You're only gonna get better. When I get too old or too busted up to hunt anymore, I'm gonna be Bobby. I'm gonna teach myself to use books as weapons, but you're gonna have a fuckin' workshop, or lair or something, and you're gonna invent new ways of doing shit that's been done the same way for centuries. You're gonna invent better ways, and in two hundred years, hunters are gonna be reading _your_ books on what to do, and they're gonna be better books, better ways." 

"You've thought about this," Sam says, surprise letting it loose before he thinks to censor it.

"We cover a lotta empty highway, Sam," Dean says, a little wry. He leans in and brushes Sam's lips lightly with his own. "This ain't gonna change what you feel like you need," he tells Sam. "Things like that settle in deep, and even when you really get in your head that you're where you're supposed to be, you might always need reminding like this, and that's okay. It don't have to make sense to work for you."

"I know," Sam says, and he does. He only has to look at Dean to know that. "I'm okay with this." He shakes his hands a little to illustrate the point. "This is fine. I'm not freaked out."

Dean gives him a sharp look. "And the rest of it?"

Sam is a little surprised, but only a little. "I don't know, Dean. I think I know what you want for me, I even think I know why, but I don't know exactly... how I feel about it. I can't... really get a grip on it, in my head."

Dean nods, as though this is no surprise to him. It probably isn't. Dean has already flatly told Sam that he planned everything as firmly as he knew how, that his plans cover every contingency Dean could come up with, and in this situation, with this set of rules that Sam isn't fully cognizant of combined with the way that Dean knows Sam so well, Sam is confident in Dean's ability to gauge where Sam is at any given time.

"What is it I'm trying for?" Dean asks simply.

"To get me to rest," Sam says. "To rest easy, be calm and learn how to rest."

"Yeah," Dean says, smiling a little. He ruffles Sam's hair. "You gotta rest, you need to more than anybody I ever met. Nobody can work so hard as you work all the time. People gotta rest. And you're not gonna do it on your own. You don't feel like you get to rest. You feel like you ain't allowed."

Sam doesn't deny it.

Apparently, Dean is done talking, because he leans up and unhooks Sam's wrists without comment, and then Sam's biceps, which Sam had been somehow entirely unaware of having been hooked up to anything, but which makes sense in retrospect, just thinking about how little pull of weight he'd been feeling on his wrists. Dean scoots down the bed to undo everything else, and Sam is abruptly all the way free, except for the collar. In the light. He realizes that he has no idea what he's supposed to do now, and he just sits there uncertainly.

"You wanna shower first or eat first?" Dean asks. Sam's stomach makes a demanding sound, and Dean smirks. "Okay, then. Go take a piss, and I can make us some sandwiches. I'm asking you not to look at the table, Sam."

Sam isn't going to. He doesn't want to. "If you try to make me eat deviled ham, I'm making a break for it," he tells Dean, however.

Dean grins a little, and reaches around Sam to unbuckle his collar. Sam reaches up and touches it, fingertips sliding along the warm leather as Dean pulls it free and away. Dean puts it on the chair with the assorted items that Sam is now allowed to see. Sam stretches his neck, aware that his skin there feels too-cool, and that he already feels kind of cranky about having to hold his head up, in an amused sort of way. He's willing to bet if he put something like that on Dean, it would take ten minutes for Dean to become aware of how much effort he's not having to put into keeping his head upright, and then would be out like a light. It probably wouldn't do much else for Dean, but Sam thinks it might be worth it just to watch Dean fall over asleep when Sam put it on him. An instant nap generator.

Sam goes to take a piss and carefully averts his gaze from the table as he makes his way to the toilet. He pulls the curtain, goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, shaves quickly because he starts looking piebald if he lets it go for more than a day or two, and is thinking fairly seriously about having a shower when he smells bacon frying, and his stomach tells him that he needs to eat right now or it's going to start attempting to digest all his other major organs. He washes his hands and wanders toward the kitchen corner.

Dean is making BLT's naked. Sam and Sam's stomach are united in their delight. There is a large glass of milk on the tiny slice of counter between the tiny stove and the tiny fridge, which is for Sam, because Dean thinks milk was created to make cereal float. There's another glass next to it that Sam thinks is beer until he gets closer, and then he sees is apple juice. He is charmed at Dean drinking apple juice and making BLT's. It's ridiculously wholesome, and Dean being naked doesn't make it any less so, somehow.

"I'm really questioning the wisdom of frying bacon naked," Sam says, though, because he's willing to bet any amount of money that hot grease spattering Dean's cock would not really work for Dean, even taking into account the huge pain kink.

Dean tips him a sideways grin. "I ain't worried." Which is obvious. You don't fry bacon naked if you aren't pretty damned sure you know how to avoid getting spattered.

Sam guzzles his glass of milk and gets himself another. Dean hands him a plate with a sandwich on it and takes Sam's glass of milk and puts it back on the counter so Sam can inhale his sandwich. It's so good Sam considers licking the plate. He resists until Dean puts another sandwich on it, and Sam manages to eat that one with a little more in the way of civility. Dean is messily devouring a sandwich with one hand and putting another sandwich together with the other.

Sam is stupidly in love with him. He resists mentioning it.

He finishes his sandwich and drinks half of his milk and rummages in the cupboard until he finds the bag of chips he bought for himself that will probably horrify Dean and opens them up. Dean tips his head down to look at the label while he works on his second sandwich.

"Are you fuckin' kidding me?" he asks, mouth full of half-chewed BLT.

"They're awesome," Sam tells him, and offers Dean a chip.

"I ain't even kissing you 'til you brush your teeth again," Dean tells him, whole face screwed up in disgust. "What kinda fucked up person even thinks to put seaweed in chips?"

"They're sesame chips," Sam tells him, just to watch Dean's face scrunch up even further.

"Sesame seeds belong on top of cheeseburger buns," Dean says. It's the way that Dean is genuinely horrified that makes it so funny, really. Dean finishes his sandwich and obtains a candy bar for himself, as though defending against Sam's healthy proximity.


	25. 25

Sam drinks the rest of his milk and Dean finishes his apple juice, and they head for the shower at the same time.

Sam would kind of like to put his soapy hands all over Dean, but Dean deflects them once and says, "You can feel me up later, I don't got an endless supply of hard ons," and Sam laughs so hard he almost slips and Dean has to hold him up. "Bitch," Dean says, when Sam stops laughing, and smacks Sam's ass.

Sam feels his cheeks heat. It isn't hurt, just a stinging warmth, and he remembers Dean telling him that it had been fun, but _playful_ fun, which was not what Dean had hoped for, but might be right up Sam's alley. Dean, the uncanny asshole, swats him again, holding Sam's arm in one hand to keep him still this time, and when Sam looks at him, he's smirking a little.

"Look at you blushing, Sammy," Dean says, only a little teasing, and Sam stands still and lets Dean smack his ass three more times and then just stroke a hand across the curve of his ass for a little while. "You like everything," Dean says, and Sam blushes a little more, but looks at Dean anyway, because he wants to see what's on Dean's face. Dean is looking back with that sharp look he gets, but he's smiling a little, too, looking pleased. Dean reels him in and hooks his elbow around the back of Sam's neck to pull him down and kiss him slowly and thoroughly. He doesn't pull back when he stops kissing Sam, and when Sam opens his eyes Dean's eyes are open, too. "Some things it takes you a little while to get your head around, but your body already knows it likes everything," Dean murmurs heatedly.

Sam doesn't know if that's really true or not, but it _sounds_ true, the way Dean says it. Sam's cock is convinced Dean is infallible, anyway. It's currently trying to drill a hole through Dean's hip.

Sam considers the amount of sex they've had since they got here. He doesn't have a very clear idea on how long that's actually been, but they've eaten twice and slept a lot, and fucked pretty much constantly. He doesn't even have a very clear idea of how many times he's actually got off. Some of it bleeds together, but he thinks part of it is because he's resting, he's learning not to keep a running count in his head, which is the point so. Go him. But he still feels a little like he might be having more sex than is allowed, and also that he may possibly be still wanting so much more that it's just selfish and greedy.

"What?" Dean asks, and slings his other arm up over Sam's shoulder, putting about a foot of space between their faces. "What're you twistin' up about?"

"How long do we get to stay here?" Sam asks, because that kind of covers all the areas of concern.

"Barring somebody on top of the wards being in mortal fucking peril, we ain't leaving until we get done," Dean says matter of factly.

"When do we get done?"

"Quit thinking about it like a finish line," Dean says. "This ain't a school assignment, and nobody's gonna get hurt if we don't get anyplace right this fucking second. We get done when we're done. No way to tell for sure right now. Maybe 'til we run out of food." Dean waggles his eyebrows.

Sam smiles in spite of the way he doesn't think any of that really helps.

"The way you're thinking right now, Sammy, is just contrary," Dean tells him, tone serious now. "I can help you learn to rest, but not if you ain't gonna let me. I gotta have your permission and at least a little cooperation."

Sam takes a few seconds to think about that, and then just says, "It feels like I'm being greedy. That I've already got..."

Dean nods, not seeming to need the end of that sentence to understand what Sam means. "Sam, that's just the way you think you ain't allowed to rest. I get what you mean, I been there. Not about resting, I ain't got a problem with that, but about other stuff. Sometimes you gotta just ignore your brain when it keeps circling back to stupid shit."

Sam blinks several times, and tries not to say anything about how profoundly that belief reflects Dean's character. It would come out sounding shitty no matter how Sam tried to say it, and he doesn't mean it like that. Or not much, anyway. Every character trait is also a flaw when taken to the extreme, and everyone is flawed. Mostly, it's not a flaw; it's just Dean. When it is a flaw, though, it's the kind of flaw that makes Sam want to punch Dean in the face.

Dean is smirking a little. "You can say it," he says. "I can see ya thinking it, anyways."

"I love you," Sam says, and thinks _shit_ immediately thereafter.

But Dean's eyes just crinkle at the corners a little more. "I ain't a delicate flower, Sammy. I ain't standing here worrying that you're gonna remember all the shit I do that makes you fuckin' nuts next week or next months and call the whole thing off. I still know you think I got 'the emotional range of a turnip,'" Sam winces, because that is a direct quote. "And I still know you're gonna get frustrated that I don't think like you think, and we both still know that we're gonna be dicks and get on each others nerves, and I'm never gonna talk as much as you think I oughta, and you're never gonna relax as much as I think you oughta, and none of that means either of us are ever going anywhere that ain't the same fuckin' place."

"You're actually kind of freaking me out with how much you're talking to me," Sam says truthfully, and then winces again.

"I knew from the start I was gonna have to explain shit. And you only think it's weird 'cause the sex I'm talking about is sex you're actually having, too. And maybe 'cause you're so smart, so you just ain't used to having to have anybody talk you through stuff. Not like this." Dean seems almost totally unconcerned about it, and Sam feels a little like he's in an Escher painting, and might realize at any moment that the floor he's standing on is actually the ceiling. Dean gives him a brief once over, head to foot, like he's inspecting the Impala for scratches or dings, and then grabs Sam's cock, and not very gently, either. Sam makes a sound that he can't really tell if is objection or encouragement, and Dean's lips quirk. "I'm gonna make you rest some," Dean says. "You need to, and I need you to. You wanna help me do it, or you wanna be a bitch about it?"

Sam doesn't even know how to answer that question. Dean sounds completely neutral on it, like he is totally okay with it either way, and Sam... Sam wants both. Or either.

No. He doesn't want to pick. And that's not the same thing, and he knows it.

Oh, jeez. And he doesn't know what to do with that. He doesn't know how to say that.

Dean is watching him patiently, and Sam is almost sure that Dean already knows what Sam doesn't know how to say, and then Sam _does_ know.

"If I can be," he says, and cuffs his own wrist with a hand briefly, then bites down on his lip and makes himself actually say it, "tied down, I'll try to help. I'll help as much as I can figure out how to. If it's here, if it's just..." And he really isn't sure of what to say on this one, waves both hands to indicate the open space and their _free_ ness or something, he isn't sure. "I don't think I can help. I think I'll fight. And I. I don't want to pick. I want you to." 

Dean's smile catches Sam so off-guard that Sam almost takes a step back. Dean isn't just smiling or even grinning at him. Dean is almost beaming. Dean looks glad and proud and grateful, and it's probably a good thing that Dean grabs him and wraps him tight with both arms, because Sam doesn't know what the fuck he'd have said or done faced with that expression otherwise. "That's good, Sam," Dean says in his ear, and his voice sounds a little tight, but in a good way. "Sammy, that's so good, sweetheart, I was hoping you'd get to where you could say that sometime _tomorrow_." Dean kisses his forehead twice.

Sam spends about fifteen seconds feeling like he's suffocating a little, like he can't tell if he wants to fight Dean off or lean into him or just stand right where he is and possibly hyperventilate for a minute.

"That was hard!" is what actually happens, Sam says it loudly and it sounds both shocked and a little scared. Dean's arms tighten, and Sam grabs at Dean wet skin until his arms catch around Dean's waist.

"I know," Dean says, and kisses Sam's forehead again, and then turns off the shower. He grabs a towel one-handed and just scrubs at Sam's hair for about five seconds, the other hand wrapped firmly around the back of Sam's neck, and doesn't bother drying either of them any further. He walks directly to the bed, Sam doesn't look at the table, and Dean steps to one side and says, "Get on the bed."

Sam hesitates, two seconds, maybe three, and then ignores his brain, which is just circling back to stupid shit, and gets on the bed on both knees and then just sits there and waits for Dean to tell him what to do. Sam is trembling a little, and is totally aware that it has nothing to do with the fact that he's still dripping wet from the shower.

Dean doesn't say a word, but he adjusts Sam's duffel, which is already against the headboard, and then rearranges about six pillows on top of -- Sam wonders if this place actually came with that many pillows, and if not, where the hell did Dean get them? -- and around it.

"Do you know how the rig works yet?" Dean asks conversationally.

Sam says, as calmly as he can, "I suspect the general methodology, but have very little actual knowledge on the specifics of the mechanism." 

"Tell me what that means," Dean says.

Sam can feel his face folding into a frown, he can almost feel his _brain_ frowning. "I know you know what that means, and I hate it when you play dumb."

Dean circles the entire bed so he's standing right in front of Sam. "I know you know that I ain't the one playing dumb here," he says very gently.

Sam has to actually think about it, he has to go back and really look hard to see how Dean is right. He sinks down to rest his ass on his heels and takes a couple of deep breaths. "I don't want to know," he says. "I don't look at it closely, and I avoid trying to figure it out in my head."

"And you want to keep it that way?"

Sam takes another breath. "Yes." It's hard to say it. It's true, mostly. He doesn't. But if he were going for full disclosure, Sam probably has it mostly worked out. Just enough that if the building caught fire and Dean was unconscious, he's pretty sure he could work it out in time to save them, assuming he isn't totally immobile, and as long as he's willing to dislocate a shoulder. So. It's provisionally true.

"Count two minutes out loud with your eyes closed," Dean says.

Sam closes his eyes and counts. He can hear Dean moving, the little _zrrip_ sounds things make when he changes Sam's position without actually letting him go or flipping him entirely. Sam distracts himself with how European fae lore maps onto Far Eastern spirit lore, trying to find intersections where things might be more true or more common. He does it a lot with different cultures. It gives him a better idea of what might be useful if he doesn't know exactly what's trying to kill them, but knows some of what it can do. Sam has a spreadsheet on his laptop that he adds stuff to nearly every day, but it still lives in his head pretty much all the time, like the half-finished crossword puzzle stuffed into the glove box of the Impala.

He can still hear Dean, but he's concentrating less on what he's hearing, which is the best he can do. Dean does something to Sam's ankles, and Sam thinks, _Imps in both cultures,_ as loudly as he can. When Dean takes Sam's wrists and turns him, pulling his arms out firmly enough that Sam understands he's supposed to hold them there, Sam thinks, _Far Eastern delineation into two groups, elemental and minor devil, European into two groups, nature and minor demon, probability of reality high, causality in differences in lore likely theological, as surviving European lore has been largely perverted by the early Christian Church's pathological attempts to demolish, subvert, or absorb every possible branch of non-Christian worship, and Far Eastern lore is heavily informed by the plurality of the pantheon and the sheer size of the territory._ By the time he finishes thinking about that, he has eight seconds left and Dean isn't touching him anymore.

At two minutes he stops counting, waits another three seconds to be sure Dean is done, and opens his eyes.

Dean is sitting at the top of the bed, propped up against the mound of duffel-supported pillows. No, Dean is lounging, Roman emperor style, one leg cocked up, forearm resting on his knee. Sam smiles a little automatically at seeing Dean looking like he's waiting for Sam to feed him grapes or suck his cock, like either of those would be fine with Dean.

Sam's arms are still held out, but now there are doubled lines of thin black rope running from the leather around his wrists to someplace that is behind Dean, but not immediately visible. The rope is long enough that it bows down between Sam and wherever they're attached. Sam stretches out both arms without thought, and he can extend them both all the way out, both to the sides and above his head. He glances down at his ankle, and there's actually a loose coil sitting on the bed beside it.

Dean is looking at him, waiting for Sam to decide whether or not this is going to work for him, probably, and Sam isn't sure, it feels weird and uncertain, and then it occurs to him that he can touch Dean anyplace he wants to. That he hasn't been granted permanent custody at this point, but he has implicit temporary authority over most of his body. 

"What can I do?" Sam asks.

"How long can you hold your breath?" Dean asks.

"About three and a half minutes under water," Sam answers automatically, but most of his brain is devoted to the fact that that question means that Sam probably isn't going to be allowed to breathe for a while, and though that is faintly worrisome in the sense that Dean has proven to be sexually un-fucking-predictable in a lot of ways, it's more likely to be cause for celebration, because Dean is probably going to fuck Sam's mouth. 

"So call it three minutes," Dean says, which is probably about right. A little more, Sam thinks, even without the effects of cold and water pressure that slows down circulation autonomically, because Sam practices sometimes. Not for this, but just in case. For their job. 

"Okay," Sam says, aware of the implied consent to being asphyxiated in some way of Dean's choosing.

"I'm gonna test that, in a minute," Dean tells him. "But you can have two minutes to do whatever you want first."

Sam is so surprised that he wastes eight seconds just trying to figure out what he wants to do, and when he still can't decide, just lets himself crawl up to Dean and put his restless, twitching hands on Dean's body wherever they choose to be, which turns out to be Dean's thighs. Sam has more than enough play in his restraints to pull Dean a little down and cover his body with Sam's full length, Dean's feet tipped against Sam's ankles, Sam's weight pushing Dean down. Sam kisses Dean, but quickly, just for three seconds, long enough to get a grasp on what he actually wants, and then scoots down Dean's body and pushes his thighs apart, grabs a pillow. Dean arches cooperatively so Sam can shove it under Dean's ass. Sam has just enough length to scoot down and push his hands under Dean's thighs and hold them up and open.

"Hold them," Sam says roughly. "Will you?" Dean slides his hands behind his own knees without comment, and Sam uses one hand to push Dean's balls up out of the way and the other to pull Dean a little open. He swipes his tongue across Dean's hole quick, twice, so Dean knows what he's doing, and then pulls Dean open further and actually pushes, starts to work him open. Dean is making a low sound, not quite a moan, more like a hum, and Dean is already a little loose from Sam's cock, and it doesn't take long before Sam can push his tongue up and in, as hard and as far as he can.

"Fuck!" Dean says.

"Guys have bigger tongues," Sam tells him, and pushes his thumb against Dean's perineum and pushes his tongue back into Dean, who is all soapy tasting, faint taste of lube, fainter taste of Sam's come, and Sam pushes his hips into the bed and fucks Dean with his tongue until Dean is shivering hotly, and then adds a finger a little roughly. Dean twists up into Sam's mouth and his finger, and Dean is panting, his hole clenching around Sam's finger and Sam's tongue. Sam pulls his finger free and swipes it across Dean's belly, where it slicks through a puddle of precome Sam had known would be there, and then pushes it back into Dean, wet, and Sam can taste Dean's precome, too. Sam is groaning and sex-flushed and so turned on at the noises Dean is making he kind of wants to die. Dean sounds almost like a girl the way he's hitching for breath and making soft, hot sounds and little moans, almost breathy, and Sam can never tell Dean that he sounds like a girl when Sam eats him out or Dean's head would probably explode, but it is so fucking sexy that Sam doesn't even feel bad for thinking it. When Sam brushes lightly across Dean's prostate Dean gives a little cry, high and sharp, and Jesus fucking Christ, Sam is going to make a mess on the sheets if Dean makes even one more sound that is even remotely girly.

It's probably best for everyone involved that Dean pulls him up by a fistful of hair. For a few seconds, Dean looks at him down the length of his own body, looks at Sam's face where it's still framed between Dean's thighs, then asks, "How long have you been wanting to do that?" like he's merely curious.

Sam reels a little with the question, partly because he's still so turned on he isn't thinking very clearly, but also because he isn't sure Dean really wants to know the answer. Apparently, his mouth is going to tell Dean whether Sam likes it or not, because he says, "Since I figured out it could be done," which is, God help him, the actual truth, the whole truth.

Dean's eyes widen just a little, but there is no censure there, just surprise. He tugs Sam up by his hair, and Sam climbs up Dean's body until Sam's cock brushes against the slick crack of Dean's ass, and Sam closes his eyes and breathes heavily for a few seconds.

"Was it as good as you thought?" Dean asks, again, just curious.

Sam's face ignites, and he shoves his cheek against Dean's so Dean can't look at him, and pants, "Better, it was better, you, Dean," _shut up,_ Sam's brain warns him faintly, but he has lost control of his mouth to brain filter, and is saying, "You sound like a girl, you, all breathy and high, you sound like a girl when I eat you out, I don't know why that, but God, and the way you..." Sam finally does get control over his mouth and shuts the hell up, but he's breathing so hard and has already said so much that there is no way Dean can not know, Sam can't even keep himself from knowing all the things he has apparently been storing in some kind of mental fuck-Dean-like-a-girl compartment.

Dean's hand settles gently on the back of his neck, and Sam realizes Dean is breathing hard, too, and Dean's cock is hard where it's pressed against Sam's belly.

"Oh my fucking God," Sam says, feeling a little like he might be about to have a fucking heart attack or something.

"The way I what?" Dean murmurs, and keeps his hand on the back of Sam's neck lightly enough that he isn't actually holding Sam there, but is clearly giving Sam permission to hide his face, not to have to look Dean in the eye until he feels like he can again. Sam gulps in a breath and honestly doesn't know if he can tell Dean, doesn't know if he _should_. Dean rocks his hips a tiny bit, and Sam's cock slides along his cleft, and Sam breath catches hard in his chest. Sam's brain provides a brief panoramic view of all the things, everything he probably shouldn't say, Sam doesn't want to _hurt_ Dean like that. Dean says, "Don't get shy on me now, Sam."

Fuck it, Sam decides. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.

"The way you felt when you fucked yourself on my cock, before," Sam says, voice a rough rasp. "You were so fucking wet I could feel it dripping down my cock, the way you fucking look, your pretty pink mouth and how you love it when I fuck you, never been fucked before and you love it, and you get so wet for me, Dean, you--" Sam drags a hand down just to slick his thumb through Dean's precome, it's dripping down the side of his belly. "-- wet like a girl, and your soft mouth when you suck my cock, Dean, and you, you come on my cock, you fucking like it when I touch you but you don't really need it, you can, you like, just me filling you up, Dean, God, it makes me want to, I want to, and I want to spread you like that, I want to, but, but..." Sam hangs up there, he just can't, he already feels both elated and terrified, and he can't say any more.

"But you want me to know it," Dean murmurs, low and hot and Dean is still breathing hard. Sam is so relieved to hear it that he's almost delirious with it, he bites gently at Dean's shoulder, thank you, thank you. "You wanna tell me what you're doing while you're doing it, you want to 'cause you will get off knowing how that makes me feel, how I feel right now, Sam, like I'm being crushed and set on fire at the same time, like I want you to do it and want to punch you in the mouth, both, and how I know I'll let you, and it will probably make me come so hard I scream and you want how fuckin' much that will tear me up, knowing that, liking it."

Sam is shuddering so hard he almost feels vertiginous and he thinks he might be hyperventilating and he is definitely leaking tears, because he wants that, he _does_ , he knows verbal humiliation, he's done it for girls who liked it, and Dean has done it to him a little, but this is a matter of degree, this is the humiliation equivalent of going for Dean's jugular, and he knows it, he feels like he should apologize for it, and that isn't even all of it. "I want to know you want it like that," he whispers. "I want to make you _tell_ me, I want to make you so crazy you can't think enough to stop yourself, I want you to _say_..."

Dean's hand tightens briefly on the back of Sam's neck. "The rest of it, I'll fuckin' give you, but... You're gonna hafta fuckin' work for that. I ain't saying I won't, I'm just saying I don't know what could make me."

Sam knows that already. That's what will make it so good.

"Tell me you don't hate that I want to," he begs unsteadily, and turns his face into Dean's neck.

Dean cups the back of his head. "I will never hate you for wanting to do anything," he says with absolute conviction. "Wanting is never wrong, it's what you do that counts. And if this is the worst thing you want to do to me, if this is the hardest thing you can think of asking me for, Sammy, you're outta luck if you think I'm runnin' scared of it." Dean rolls his hips again, and this time he rubs his cock against Sam's belly long enough for Sam to feel how solid he is, how wet. "You will want more. You're gonna find other things when you feel steady enough that you can look for 'em. Nothing you want to do is ever gonna make me think less of you. Nothing about what you want now, or figure out you want later, none of it is wrong, nothing about it makes _you_ wrong."

"It feels wrong," Sam says, but he sounds better to himself, he sounds less like he's about to freak the fuck out.

"It feels confusing," Dean says. "It feels new. It's gonna be like the first time you hit me, Sam, the first time when you knew exactly what the fuck you were doing to me. This is just like that, there's a line, and you gotta find it, and then you gotta walk right along the middle of it, that's how it's best, when you hate it and love it both, there's a space there where it's perfect, and it's so far from wrong I ain't sure how to tell you how far it is. Nothing you want is wrong. I promise, Sam. Nothing."

Sam grasps that that is a broad spectrum policy, and he will let himself be reassured more thoroughly by it later, but right now it's only this one thing that Sam needs to know is okay, and his relief at hearing it is so big he just goes sort of limp, sprawled across Dean and probably half-crushing him breathless. He just lets himself feel the enormity of his relief, and when it passes all he can think of is Dean's permission. Sam can have it. Dean will let him have it, and won't even stop Sam from trying to take the things that Dean isn't sure he's capable of giving. Explicitly yes.

Yes, Sam, you can fuck me like a girl.

Sam feels light headed.

"You're crushin' my lungs," Dean says.

Sam levers himself up to his elbows.

Dean is looking up at him. He's a little pink, but that could be lack of oxygen from Sam laying on him. He looks calm, otherwise.

"Dean," Sam says. He has to pause and lick his lips. "Dean, I want to fuck you like a girl."

And Sam can see the difference between this and the other things Dean wants immediately. Dean flushes harder, brighter, and his mouth opens a little, but his eyes go sharp when they go dark, a little angry, brows drawn down. Sam can see how he's going to have to either gentle Dean through it or force Dean past it quick, can think of a couple of ways to do both, and he also gets that he won't have to do it just once, that it will be... it will be like this. It will be like what Dean is doing for Sam right now, putting Sam back where he belongs again and again and again, even when Sam isn't cooperating the way he should be. That Dean won't be able to help it, and that's part of what will make it good, too.

Dean recovers pretty quickly from it once it's clear that Sam isn't actually going to try and do it right now. The flush is the last thing to go, though. It lingers, even when Dean is looking calm again in all other regards.

"Sam," Dean says, and his lips twitch into a small smile that only lasts about a second. "I want to fuck you like a girl, too."

Sam feels his own hot blush, slightly wide eyes, and he's surprised, but not shocked, not really, and there is a definite sharp, almost-painful thrill to it, an uncomfortable narrow edge of humiliation, but he knows, he can already tell, that it doesn't dig claws and teeth into him the way it does Dean. That Sam will blush through it, that some of it will make him cringe a little, but mostly it will just be hot as hell, and he will probably say anything Dean wants him to say without a lot of prompting.

"You get wet enough," Sam says, a little slowly while he evaluates it. "You get so wet that if you're careful, if you can treat me like a _virgin_ girl, you can probably do it without lube."

That, apparently, is either a very good thing to say or a very bad thing to say. Dean revs up like the Impala, Dean goes so hot so fast that Sam misses some of it, and is only really clear on how hard it pushed Dean when Dean grips his biceps in both hands hard enough to hurt, and says, very quietly, in the non-threatening tone that is actually the most dangerous voice in Dean's arsenal, "Shut up about it, Sammy. Shut up about it right now."

Sam shuts up about it with a sharp, hot jolt of fearful want at hearing Dean direct that voice at Sam. Dean pushes Sam up by his grip on Sam's arms, and Sam moves obediently in the direction in which he's being guided. When Dean keeps pushing when Sam is sitting up straight, he automatically adjusts his legs wider for balance, and then arches his back until he can get his hands down behind him to support his weight.

"Right like that," Dean says without meeting Sam's eyes. He's looking down at Sam's cock, but Sam can still see how tight Dean's face is, and he turns his mind away from whatever it is about what just happened that Dean doesn't want to tell Sam. Dean is an open book on this, on sex, and Sam won't try and dissect anything Dean deliberately attempts to keep to himself. He recites poetry in his head, he picks Auden, Sam has always thought that Dean would like Auden if he'd just give it a chance, and he opens his legs wider when Dean presses his thighs apart. "Be still," Dean says, a little less, but still nowhere close to being outside dangerous territory, and Dean bends down and pulls Sam's cock out so it's nearly parallel to the bed. Dean rests his ass on his heels and considers Sam's cock for a few seconds, then licks his lips and slides them slick over the head, and doesn't stop where Sam thinks he probably should, and doesn't stop even when Sam bumps up against the back of Dean's throat. He just pauses there, tugs Sam's cock down a little more, makes a small noise and inhales hard through his nose, and Sam watches Dean swallow past the head of Sam's cock, feels it so hot and fluttering and resistant, and the sound Dean makes is both grating and wet, choking and hot enough to make Sam have to close his eyes so he can't fucking see it.

Dean doesn't get it all, doesn't even get close, but he gets enough that Sam is almost sure that Dean will be able to at some point, that they'll find it because the gag reflex is the hard part, and Dean goes down far enough for long enough that he obviously has a handle on it. Dean even manages a tiny, careful amount of motion, nothing close to a thrust, but enough for some friction that is separate from the flex and clench of Dean's throat around his cock, and Sam lets out a helpless, moaning little cry that is high enough to be considered pretty girly in its own right, and has to work hard not to just relax and come, he could, he can feel it, because if he comes down Dean's throat this first time, Dean might never try again and Sam won't risk it.

Dean pulls back, and licks the tip of Sam's cock. "I can't get the angle worked out from this side of it, Sammy, help me out." Dean's voice sounds totally normal, at least in tone. It's a little raspy.

"Hands and knees," Sam says, and Dean backs up and goes down and Sam sits up straight and edges closer and gets his thighs half-clenched in a way that will set them to screaming in just a few minutes. "I'm going to hold your chin, you need to relax your neck as much as you can and let me direct you until you can feel where it works." Dean doesn't protest, so Sam gets his cock in one hand and Dean's chin in the other. Dean lets Sam direct his face and lets his weight lean almost entirely into Sam's hand. Sam adjusts Dean's jaw up a little and Sam's cock down a little, and says, "Pinch me or shove me if you need me to stop," and pushes carefully into Dean's mouth.

Dean's eyes are closed, and his brows furrow when Sam bumps against the back of his throat. He takes a deep breath, and Sam raises up half an inch or so and pushes, feels Dean swallow hard twice, and then Sam is past the hard part and is easing in with more care than Dean had been using. Sam is wide enough that he is going to make Dean's throat raw if he thrusts at all, even if he doesn't, probably, but it's so fucking good Sam genuinely cannot let himself think about it, he is reciting the periodic table of elements while he eases his cock down his big brother's throat. Dean's hands are clenched in the sheets but his head is still heavy resting in Sam's hand, his eyelashes are fluttering, and he's going ruddy and his mouth is stretched pink around Sam's cock, and Sam is going to come if he doesn't stop right now, even though Sam's only an inch or so further in than Dean had made it himself.

"I have to stop," Sam whispers, and Dean's eyebrows frown at him. "I'm going to come if I don't stop." Dean opens his eyes and looks up at Sam, utterly familiar, _what the fuck are you waitin' for?_ , and Sam would laugh except he thinks he might die. "You'll be able to tell when to swallow, that'll be that hard part, don't pull off when you feel it or you'll choke," he stammers out, and Dean closes his eyes and rocks a little forward and Sam comes with one hand still cupping Dean's chin and the other still holding his cock down at the right angle, and he shudders through it with gritted teeth, as still as he can, makes it as easy as he can while his brain is shredding in his skull, and Dean swallows like a pro, like he's guzzling a beer, Sam's cock so sensitive that it almost hurts, and so good he doesn't care if it hurts.

Dean pulls off almost as carefully as Sam had pushed in, and coughs for several seconds, swallowing. "Sonofabitch," Dean says, when he's done. "It feels like I swallowed a handful of gravel."

"It's just irritation, drink something. Milk or Yoohoo, something thick is better."

Dean makes an unhappy face, but gets off the bed and goes to the fridge. Sam watches him grab a bottle of Yoohoo and open it and tip it back. He drinks about a third of it, then takes a big breath. "Huh," he says. He brings the bottle back to Sam and offers it to him. Sam takes it.

Dean looks at him, and puts a hand on Sam's thigh and pushes lightly. Sam realizes he's still half-up, thighs clenched for the right angle, and lets them unknot so he's sitting on his heels. Dean looks at him for several seconds, and then just says, "Have a drink, Sammy."

Sam drinks some Yoohoo, about half of it, not really aware of being thirsty until he actually starts to swallow. When he's done, he hands it back to Dean, who caps it and puts it on the chair, with its amusingly assorted items. Dean grabs a wet wipe and uses it cursorily on his hands, and then scrubs at Sam's cock with it until Sam has to bite his lip to keep from objecting. He's flaccid and prickling and oversensitive, and Dean is hurting him a little, but before it gets that bad, Dean is done. He tosses the wet wipe toward the kitchen trash. It lands half draped over one edge.


	26. 26

Dean is looking at Sam again. He does it for a few seconds, and then walks around the head of the bed, behind it, where the table now lives. Sam can't see it from where he is, but he can see Dean looking at it. Dean's expression is thoughtful. Then he picks something up and comes back around to stand beside Sam. Sam can see shiny metal peeking out from between Dean's fingers, but can't really tell what he's got. He doesn't have to try for long, anyway. As soon as Dean stops moving, he opens his hand, palm up, and shows Sam what he's holding.

Sam looks at it curiously for about two seconds, grasps more or less what it's used for by the shape of it, and is hit square in the chest with a hot wash of half-terrified arousal. He's sure he is gaping at it, but he ignores that, because if Dean is going to put that on him... "You'd better do it now," Sam says almost calmly. "Or it'll be too late."

Dean, who has been watching Sam's face, drops his eyes to Sam's cock, and Sam gets to see Dean gaping for a moment. It's amusing, but only very distantly so.

"1789 to 1797, George Washington, John Adams," Sam says. "1797 to 1801, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson."

Dean stares at him for a second, eyes back on Sam's face, and then he starts moving. Sam doesn't watch. Sam absolutely cannot watch, it will defeat the entire purpose.

"1801 to 1809, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr and George Clinton, 1809 to 1817, James Madison, George Clinton and Elbridge Gerry, 1817 to 1825, James Monroe, Daniel D. Tompkins, 1825 to 1829, John Quincy Adams, John Calhoun, 1829 to 1837, Andrew Jackson, John Calhoun and Martin--" 

There's a short, sharp click, and Dean straightens.

"That's how you get rid of a hard on?" Dean asks, a little amused.

"No," Sam says, and understands that this is Dean's way of letting Sam take a minute to not have to talk about what just happened, to figure out where it goes in his head before he tries to talk about it. Sam doesn't want to guess where it goes, he doesn't want to think of it at all, but talking to Dean will only help with that. So he explains, "No, to get rid of a hard on the list is much uglier. This was just to keep from thinking about what you were doing, to not let myself really feel you doing it. It was just distraction. I do it. Really, all the time."

"I've never heard you doing it," Dean says, but his face is not exactly surprised, but more like flickering with realization. Like he'd always known that Sam was doing _something_ , and now he knows what.

"I don't usually do it out loud," Sam says wryly. "I didn't want to hear you doing it either."

"Presidents," Dean says with a tiny mocking smile.

Sam blushes a little, but defends, "And Vice Presidents. In chronological order. Not always, but that's one of the first things I ever memorized, so it's far away in my head. I have to work harder to get to it, so it's more distracting."

Dean opens his mouth, looking weird, like he's unwillingly fascinated, then shuts it again. Then he asks, "You remember everything you ever memorized? Really?"

Sam can't decide how he feels about this conversation. He's still a little embarrassed. He knows his brain doesn't work like Dean's, he knows a lot of the ways in which they are different, but he's not sure clarifying how they're different is actually a good thing for either of them. But. But. Sam can't count the number of times he has wished Dean would just answer his goddamned questions. He literally cannot count it, and Sam has a running count of most things he considers important.

So.

"Pretty much," Sam says. "If I mean to, then I can. If I'm not trying to, it depends on how much of it I really want to know. So. I could recite you most of my textbooks from school verbatim, but law textbooks are written to be memorized. They're lists already. Lists of laws. There are case studies, and I can tell you which ones are pertinent and why and where to find them, but I don't have every case memorized. Some things are easier than others. It's why I still need our books, even though I know most of them backwards and forwards. They aren't an orderly list of facts. They're a rambling account of fact and myth and speculation, and wording can be misleading, verbiage and usage change over time, and some of it is totally incorrect, some partially. I can't count on it to be right. Committing things I know might be wrong to memory is tricky. I have to know all the time that it might not be right. It's easier to memorize what I know is right and what I strongly suspect to be right, and just know where to find the rest of it. I'll know enough to make a good guess, or I'll know enough to know what is almost certainly wrong. And the more I know about what works and why, the easier it gets to read something fresh out of a book I've never seen and be able to weigh the value of the information, just based on what I already know works."

Dean looks conflicted. "You're good at it," he says. "I understand what you're saying even though I can't really get how you do it, and I know you're good at it, better'n anybody I ever met. But do you like it, Sam?"

"Almost always," Sam tells Dean honestly. "I know it sounds weird to you, and I know that you'd hate it. But it's normal for me, Dean. And the only time I don't like it is when I really am trying not to think about something. And then I list. I distract myself. I've known how to do it most of my life. I don't hate it. The way I think doesn't make me unhappy. I like knowing what I need to know. I like it that I can remember things I want to remember." 

Dean looks reassured, a little happier, but there is still something uncertain on his face.

Sam can't think of what to say that might make it go away, and he's pretty sure Dean isn't going to ask him for whatever Dean needs to feel certain. Maybe Dean doesn't know how to ask that question, or maybe he doesn't know what he needs to hear.

"Tell me?" Sam tries, the worst sort of question to ask Dean, normally, too broad and open ended and easily deflected, but things are different. Sam thinks he can ask questions like that, now, as long as he doesn't take advantage.

And he's right.

Dean gives him a tiny shrug. "It's not that you're smarter than me, Sam. I've always known it, and I've always been proud. It's that I wish I could help you with more of it, so that you gimme a pile of books and tell me to mostly memorize 'em, and I could do that for you. So you didn't have to do it all."

Sam considers that carefully and then considers how to give Dean a response that will make sense to him. "How do you neutralize an Osuri manifestation?" Sam asks. Sam sort of knows this, in a general sense. He knows because Dean had mentioned it to him once, in passing, but he only knows the vaguest details of how it had actually been done. He knows a lot about it from books, though, and he thinks this will work best.

Dean's eyebrows climb slightly, but he answers readily enough. "How big?"

"One house."

"Average size house, probably three pounds of gunpowder or black powder, or even phosphorous in a pinch, but that's not gonna be as pretty. Just dust it on, chant a little, light it up, quick flash, almost no damage, should be good to go." Dean looks pleased at the idea of creating flash fire. Sam tries not to smile.

"What if it was a city block?"

Dean lets out a little whistle and looks thoughtful. "You'd need a shitload. Are we talking skyscrapers, here, Sammy, or like one and two story buildings?"

"One and two story buildings. Like a small town city block."

"At least five pounds per square foot of ground cover," Dean says. "More depending on the way the buildings sit on the street, and the shapes of the rooftops will make it a bitch to guess without seeing it."

"Where would you get that much gunpowder?" Sam asks.

Dean turns it over in his head for a few seconds. "You could buy it in bulk if you had the time and money. You and me would probably have to steal it, to get that much. We could drive someplace to steal it in less time than it'd take to make it." Dean smirks a little. "Hell, to make it we'd probably have to drive someplace and steal the saltpeter. So. I'd bet on the nearest military base being the place most likely to have what we need, as much as we need. Unless we luck the fuck out and there's a fireworks factory the next town over."

"And they'll just have big barrels labeled 'gunpowder'?"

"They might have a few, if we could find the munitions stock, but we're probably looking at taking it outta mortar rounds. Nothing else big enough uses gunpowder, really, not enough of it to put in a good supply."

"How would you apply it?"

"Depends on how quiet you wanna be about it. Quickest way would be a high pressure hose, but you'd have to have air pressure, not water pressure, getting it wet would kinda fuck up the fire part, but any companies that make chemicals of any kind usually got something like that. So. We'd steal it, if we had to do it fast and ugly. But if we had a little time, we could go to the hardware store and buy pressurized fertilizer spray canisters, or we might could even get some from a pesticide place for cheaper, just rent 'em."

"Dean, I didn't know any of that." 

Dean blinks at him. "Yeah, you did. You probably know six ways to get rid of Osuri."

"I know nine," Sam says. "I know nine _theoretical_ ways, and I've never done any of them. Half of them are probably wrong, but I have no way of knowing which half. And nowhere in that list is gunpowder. Because my list comes from centuries old books translated from pre-Roman Latin. And I've never done it. But, Dean, even if gunpowder was on my list, I wouldn't know how much to use. I wouldn't be able to guesstimate a quantity designed to cause minimal damage based on the size or shape of the structure because I don't think like that. I deal in relatives, mostly. Things that could be, things that might be, things that have multiple applications or solutions or consequences. That's part of what it means to be a big-picture thinker, I think. You deal in what's really going to happen. How to get it done. I can do some of that, and you can, and you _do_ research and track lore, but if I know six ways that might work, before I try any of them, I'm going to ask you if you know how. And if you don't know, I'm going to tell you the six ways and ask you which one you think will work best, which one can you and I can actually make happen, and statistically, you will be right about eighty percent of the time."

"You could’ve figured it out, though," Dean says. "It's not like you can't use a measuring tape, Sammy."

"I could have, yes, but not as easily as you think I could have. I would actually have to measure. You think it should be easy for me because it's easy for you, but it doesn't work like that. I don't think like that. You just spent two minutes telling me exactly how to do something that it would take me days to work out on my own. Dean, even if somebody told me from the very beginning that what I needed was gunpowder, it would still take me days to work out how much, how to get it, what to do with it. Then I would still have to actually do it. And I'd probably burn something down, because it's not my area. I could figure it out, but I would have started with my best guess method, Dean, and that involves sacrificing a baby goat. Dean. Baby goats are adorable. And it might not have worked, I can't know. I never want to sacrifice a baby goat, but I especially don't want to do it if it's not going to work. I want to steal gunpowder from the U.S. Military and let you set a city block on fire."

"Okay, Sam, Christ," Dean says. "Nobody's making you sacrifice a baby goat." But Dean looks pink and pleased and like he thinks he's awesome, which is exactly how Dean is supposed to look, so Sam is okay. He may never be able to say 'You're pulling your share of the weight, Dean,' or 'Yes, I'm the brains, but I'm not the _only_ brains,' to Dean and have Dean believe it, but that's okay. Sam is willing to put forth whatever amount of effort is required to get that sentiment across as often as he needs to.

Sam isn't sure, however, the appropriate way to segue back into sex from this conversation. How do you get from sacrificing a baby goat to hey, what did you just put on my cock without dying of embarrassment?

Dean's lack of embarrassment is epic, however, and he just leans down and cups Sam's cock and balls and the shiny, heavy curl of metal around them, and that is enough. Just that, and watching Dean looking at it for a few seconds, seeing Dean lick his lips. That's enough to push baby goats all the way to the back of Sam's brain.

Dean curls his other hand around the back of Sam's neck and exerts enough pressure to make it clear that he wants Sam to look.

Sam resists for a couple of seconds. He knows what's going to happen, what is already starting to happen just because Sam is thinking about it, he understands the physics, but he isn't sure what it's actually going to feel like. The _idea_ of it makes him feel hot all over, and he kind of wants to keep it.

But he looks anyway. Dean wants him to, and even if he didn't, Sam probably wouldn't be able to stop himself for long.

Seeing it, what it _looks_ like on him, though, is such a shock that Sam actually does reel a little, he tips a little sideways and Dean steadies him with the hand on the back of Sam's neck. Sam's face is on fire and his mouth is open, but he has no idea what sound to make. He just watches his cock firm up, feels it, and then it's just pressure, or constriction, Sam isn't sure exactly which, he can't tell. It doesn't hurt, but it makes him hunch a little, like his body thinks it should hurt. Dean drops to one knee on the bed and puts his shoulder against Sam's so Sam can lean into him.

Sam can feel his pulse in his groin, and it's not that it's never happened before, but it has never been so literal before. He can feel it behind his balls and at the base of his cock, all the blood that can't reach his cock and wants to, all the blood in his cock already pressing the skin of his cock against the inside of the metal, so there's no more room. He can't get hard. His body wants to, but there isn't room, and that feeling of pressure almost-maybe constriction, the distinct rhythm of his pulse, gets stronger and stronger. Sam's body tries to bow further forward and Dean lets him without letting him fall on his face, and Sam still can't figure out what the fuck it feels like, except that it doesn't hurt, and he feels like if he opens his mouth he is as likely to scream as he is to moan, and he can't stop looking at it.

His cock is red but not like it gets when it's hard, not dark red, just a little flushed, pink and semi-firm, and the thing, the device, there is really no word for it except cage, nothing fits it, _it has a lock_ , it is obviously a _cage_ , but just thinking it makes Sam's cock feel it even more, makes the rest of his body try to curl in around his cock like that is somehow going to help, and it's so fucking _shiny_ , gleaming and bright where it's wrapped around, strangling Sam's cock.

And. And. Sam's whole package is sitting in Dean's hand, the head of his cock, the top of the thing, the cage, oh Jesus, is resting at the base of Dean's thumb and there is precome trickling down Dean's wrist, a lot of it, like, so much that Sam's cock could be _Dean's_ , and Sam hunches harder and Dean slings an arm under Sam's chest and holds him up, and God, it feels like Sam's entire blood supply is attempting to make it into Sam's cock and can't do it, and God, it feels, it feels, it's like, except it isn't, it isn't like anything, there is no reference point, it's only like itself. 

"Oh," Sam says, "oh," and curls in again, his whole body, like he is spasming with it while Dean holds him up, and Sam watches his cock leak a little stream of precome directly out the hole on the end of the cage and onto Dean's hand, not as much as Dean, not really, but more than normal for Sam, and he has to close his eyes, he has to, he feels like he might go blind.

He feels it when it starts to recede, when Sam's body decides to give it up and put all Sam's blood back where it usually lives.

Sam goes sort of loose and boneless, he can't help it. Dean makes a surprised sound of effort, but keeps Sam upright long enough to let go of Sam's cock and balls and get his other hand up to flip Sam over onto his back like a pancake. Sam allows himself to be flipped without resistance and lands however he lands. He's listening to his breathing, he hadn't noticed it before, but Sam is breathing so hard he's groaning a little with it, he's breathing like he's run five miles, and not a brisk morning run, either, but fleeing for his life kind of running, and he's trembling that way, too, like he has just expended an immense amount of effort _not_ to get a hard on.

Dean is watching him, and Sam watches him back and tries to work out what just happened, whether it was actually good, he can't really figure it out, it doesn't seem to really fit in either good or bad, it's too new, too different.

Dean reaches toward it, and Sam doesn't move away, but he says, "Don't," and it comes out weirdly whispery.

Dean pauses, hand outstretched, and looks up at Sam. He just regards Sam silently for a few heartbeats, and then pulls his hand back. "There's a hinge on the back, right behind your balls. Is it pinchin' or hurting you, Sammy?"

"No," Sam says. It isn't. He can sort of feel where it must be, but he hadn't even noticed it.

"Okay," Dean says. "Will you tell me why you don't want me touching it?"

"Because," Sam says, and only actually grasps the answer an instant before he says it, "you'll set it off." Dean's eyebrows tip upward a little. "I don't know, I don't exactly know what it is, but if you touch it, if, then, and I can't see it, I can't stop it if I can see it."

Dean watches him again, and Sam feels like he ought to be able to explain it better than that, and tries to get himself to gather together a better explanation. But Dean says, "So. What you're saying is, if you see me touching your cock in the cage, it's gonna set _you_ off enough that you're gonna try and get hard, and when you can't, what just happened is gonna happen again." Sam nods. Dean looks at him again. "Sam. Why in fuck would I not want to do that, then?"

"I can't tell if I even like it," Sam says truthfully. Dean looks disbelieving, and Sam says, "What?" in surprise, and then Dean just rocks back a little and looks surprised, too.

"You can't tell if you like it," Dean says, not like it's a question, but just like he's thinking about that. "Sammy." Dean moves up the bed, his hip bumping Sam's ribs. He holds his right hand out about a foot in front of Sam's face and flips it over to show Sam the back of his hand. Sam immediately sees why. The back of Dean's hand is still damp and a little shiny, and even if it wasn't, Sam would be able to tell. He can see the places where it's already dry, they're a little glossy looking, refracting light. Dean turns it slowly so Sam can look at the ball of his palm and the stretch of skin between his thumb and forefinger and an inch or so up the inside of Dean's wrist, where it's still almost all the way wet.

"I," Sam says, and doesn't even know what to say.

Dean seems to understand that, for which Sam is grateful. "I got some solid information, and I got a lot of less reliable information, and they ain't tied too closely together all the time," he tells Sam a little slowly, like he's thinking it out even as he's saying it, which is a little unusual for Dean, makes Sam try to pay more attention. "I know you're gonna want both, and I got no idea what order would work out better for this one, Sam. This one I did not see coming." And Sam can see that, he can see the way that Dean looks a little dazed, but he's still surprised. "I'm guessing that between us, we can work it out. How do you wanna do it?"

Sam ponders that for a moment.

"Sammy, d'you need a nap?" Dean sounds faintly amused, but looks completely serious.

"What? No. I." Sam blinks. "I don't think I'm, maybe," he says.

"I don't think you're maybe either, Sammy," Dean says, smiling a little, and leans down to kiss Sam's mouth lightly. "Sit up some, it'll help."

Sam eases up to his elbows and carefully doesn't look down and scoots on his ass up to the headboard. He leans back and looks at Dean and then sits up. "I," he says.

Dean gives him a long look, and reaches behind Sam and gets a pillow and drops it across Sam's lap. Sam looks down at it, and then leans back against the rest of the pillows.

"That gonna do it?" Dean asks.

"Maybe. For a little," Sam says, and rubs at his eyes, tries to make his brain work. "I feel punch drunk," Sam says finally.

"You been awake three times longer than any other time since we got here, so I ain't surprised," Dean says. "We don't have to work this out now if you don't want. We can sleep and eat and fuck and talk whenever we feel like it." 

Sam smiles a little at the way 'talk' is tacked on at the end there, and really thinks about it. He could sleep. He's a little tired. But he isn't exhausted, or even all that tired. Just a little. "I don't think it's because I'm tired, Dean. Give me some coffee and a candy bar, though, because I still feel like I'm not really thinking right."

Dean says, "Coffee's cold," as he gets up, but does not otherwise argue. He gets them both cold coffee, and lets Sam have his pick between a Snickers and a Butterfinger. Sam stares at them for long enough that Dean just gives him the Snickers, and Sam accepts it because apparently he can't decide anyway.

He does start to feel a little clearer once he has a Snickers and half a cup of coffee in him, though. Sam isn't sure if it's the sugar, the caffeine, or just shaking off the lingering affects of what is apparently a spectacular experience for Sam except that he doesn't really know why or exactly how. He is only just beginning to see the humor in that at this point, and he's pretty sure if he doesn't figure out what actually happened it will become far less funny again.

"And this doesn't bother you?" Sam asks Dean, who stops eating mid-bite to give Sam a wide eyed look. "That neither of us really know what just happened? That doesn't seem... in some way not right, to you?"

"We both know exactly what happened," Dean says, and flips the wrapper around the top of his half-eaten candy bar and sets it aside. "The only thing we don't know is why things happened how they did. We're both safe and nobody lost an eye. Neither of us is bleeding unexpectedly or possessed. We both still got voice boxes and can use 'em to figure out what we don't know, so. We're good, Sam."

Sam is disgusted with himself for finding that both adorable and reassuring. "Wow. I am just. If I'd known your criteria for success was so enthusiastically non-lethal, I'd have signed up years ago."

Dean flips him off. "And we know you ain't brain damaged, but you're still a bitch." 

Sam grins. He can't help it. His only comfort is that Dean doesn't seem to be able to help it either.

"Okay," Sam says. "Okay. So, you didn't know that was going to happen. What did you think was going to happen?"

Dean considers this and then says, "This was for me, Sam. I wanted this. I thought you could go either way on it. If you hated it, we'd quit it, and we'd know, but I didn't think you'd hate it. I thought you might not feel strong about it one way or another, or you might like it 'cause I like it, mostly. If you did like it, I thought you'd like it the same way you like your collar."

Sam snorts. "Like I don't have to hold my dick up?"

Dean smirks. "Something like that. But that obviously ain't it."

"Why? Did you, I mean?" Sam asks.

Dean tips his head a little. "I dunno. Not exactly. I passed it in the store, I saw it, I thought about putting it on you, and I put it in the fuckin' basket thingy. I never used one, never had one used on me. Know what they are, never thought about 'em one way or another, really. Did a little research after the fact so I wouldn't fuck it up, so I know a lot of reasons why either one of us might like it, but not the right one. I'll know the right one when I hit on it. Don't care about your chastity, Sammy, don't want to have ultimate control over when you come, though that's been kinda fun, actually." Dean smirks at Sam's scowl, but neither of them mean it. They're both thinking. "I want something about it, and I'll figure out exactly what it is eventually, but right now all I got is: I wanted to put it on you, put you in it, see you in it." 

Sam shifts uncomfortably and tries to ignore that he even owns a penis that can't be allowed to attempt to become erect. Dean doesn't say anything about it, but Sam sees Dean seeing it, which just makes him have to ignore it even harder. "So," he says. "So, we both got off on it, and you don't know why, and I don't really have any clear understanding of... anything after I looked at it, basically."

Dean nods. "But, for the record," Dean says. "Y'know, if this has any bearing at all on whether or not we keep it, or at least try it again. You sounded like it was awesome. I mean, Sam. I'da never let you do anything for ten minutes that you didn't sound--"

"Ten minutes?" Sam interrupts sharply. "That was not, no, that was _ten minutes_?"

Dean's chin tips up a little. He doesn't say anything, but Sam knows that look. That's recognition, that's some kind of idea, at least. "How long did you think?" Dean asks finally.

Sam, who has a great sense of time normally, has been totally fucked up since... since before they came here. So he can't be sure, damnit, not totally, but he is pretty close to sure. He'd been there for all of it, there are no gaps or jagged edges or fuzzy places in his memories, and he knows what that feels like, not just here but also from being knocked around and actually hurt, so he is pretty close to sure, even though he suspects Dean is right. "A minute. Two absolute maximum. Maybe a minute and a half from the time I looked down and saw it to the time you reached for it and I said something."

"Sam, I didn't try and touch you for five full minutes, at least. You were awake, you were looking right at me, we were making eye contact, Sam, there is no way you were out with your eyes open."

"No, I remember that. I remember watching you watching me." Sam shakes his head. "I'm not doubting you, Dean. I'm doubting me, I'm positive that you're right, but it didn't feel like that. If it were just a minute or two, if it were even just five, maybe it could be subjectivity, all things being relative, whatever, but. That's not an incremental leap."

"No," Dean says. "Yeah, that's the difference between my coffee is cold and I gotta nuke it and I gotta walk a mile to get a cup of fuckin' coffee." Dean rubs a hand through his hair and squints at Sam. "Okay. Okay, when I yanked your chain," Dean says, smirking a little, and making a rubbing gesture with the first two fingers and thumb of one hand to illustrate, which is ridiculous, but successful, so Sam rolls his eyes in understanding. "From the first time I actually did that, when it started, to when I came on you, how long was that."

Sam rolls it around in his head for a minute. It was longer ago, and he had been busy, before, during, and after. Time does fly, sometimes, Sam knows it. But. "Two or three minutes? I'm not as sure, but. Less than five."

Dean looks at him. "How long have we been having this conversation? Since we got coffee, how long?"

"Ten or eleven minutes," Sam says.

Dean nods. "Okay."

"You think it's a sensation thing, like the chain, but Dean. I had it on for an entire conversation before that happened," Sam points out.

"But you weren't trying to get hard during that conversation, and you weren't looking at it. You were working hard not to think about it at all. And I don't think it's just that. I think it's both, I think it fucks you up so much 'cause of the way it feels, but also 'cause of the way it looks. I think it hits you hard in two or three ways that really fuckin' work for you, and that makes you kinda crazy, and I know you like to know what the hell is going on, Sam, and something like this is gonna make you freaked out, but you love it. I know your body when you love something, and you love it. I think you're working hard right now not to think about it. I think if you stopped doing that, listing or whatever it is you're doing while you're talking to me, you could get a better idea of what it's actually doing, but you're freaked out and maybe don't wanna know right now. And that's okay. I can take it off, and we can get some sleep and figure it out later. It don't gotta be now. You just gotta tell me how you want it." 

And Dean is right about that part of it, at least, Sam is working his ass off not to think about it in any way that is not entirely academic, he's working so hard that he's mapping Greek gods onto the Roman pantheon and reciting pi at the same time, and he's talking to Dean, too, he's doing everything he can not to let himself start to try and get hard. And Dean is right that it's freaking Sam out, too, not horribly, not like he'd been freaked out at the very beginning, but enough that he isn't sure he wants to know all the reasons it works for him, isn't sure he wants to let himself be... rolled out of his mind that way again.

But he does, too, he wants to know and he wants to understand, and he wants to feel it. He may be freaked out, but he believes Dean's assessment, he believes Dean knows how to recognize something Sam loves, even if Sam doesn't know it, and he wants to really feel it and maybe be able to hold onto why it's good, or at least grasp a little more clearly how good it actually is.

And he is tired. He could sleep right now, though he doesn't have to, he isn't desperate for sleep, but he could fall asleep easily caught up against the warmth of Dean's body, and that would be good, too.

"Dean, I don't know," he says helplessly. "I can't..." And he recognizes it, abruptly, bumps up against it again and recognizes it, that it isn't that he doesn't know, not really. It's that he doesn't want to decide. That's a thing for him, he understands. And Dean has known it, that Sam doesn't want to decide. Sam had known it, even, Sam had actually said it out loud, that it was about control, part of it anyway, and Dean had told him yes, right off the bat, provisionally, that that wasn't all, but yes, that was a thing for Sam.

Dean is watching him, eyes a little narrowed, a scrutiny that has become familiar over the last couple of months. The way Dean looks when he's watching Sam to see if he's going to figure it out. Because Dean knows how Sam works, too, and that things mean more to Sam if he figures them out himself. If he works through them himself, and Dean has been making time for Sam to do that, they've been screwing a lot, but they've been talking a lot, too, and Dean has given Sam both information and time to think, but not really enough time to _over_ think, all deliberate. Dean had told Sam he had a plan. He had told Sam more than once.

And this is a big deal, Sam suspects. The way Dean had smiled at him in the shower, the gladness, just for Sam, glad for Sam, because Dean really, truly believes with all his heart, from the place where Dean lives his life, that Sam will want this, in the end. That Dean will have given Sam something that is special just for Sam. And Sam would have been perfectly happy to go on about their business, giving Dean what he needs, knowing that it's a huge deal for Dean, but not really worried about having anything like it for himself because Sam loves giving Dean what he needs, Sam gets off on it almost as much as Dean does, and he... he doesn't feel like he's allowed to rest. Sam feels like having Dean at all is more than he probably deserves. 

Even knowing that, though, even understanding that he doesn't want to decide, wants to leave it up to Dean on this, that's a decision of a kind. That's a decision to accept that he wants to be able to do that, he has to really accept that sometimes he doesn't want to have to make that choice, any choice. That it wasn't a one time thing, in the shower, that this will be something he wants sometimes, not just one time or a couple of times.

"I don't want to choose," Sam says. It comes out quiet and a little hurt. It does hurt a little. It hurts who Sam thinks he is.

There is no moment of reassurance this time, no kisses on the forehead. Dean erupts off the bed like he's been sitting still through sheer force of will for hours, and his face is all sharp, hard hunger, and whatever it is about this Dean wants, whatever thing he can't quite verbalize, is more powerful than Sam had suspected from Dean's calm explanation, because Dean jerks the pillow out of Sam's lap and actually flings it across the room. He is on Sam before Sam's mouth can even drop all the way open in surprise, spreading Sam's thighs a little roughly.

He just looks at Sam's cock for a long time, just looks, and when he finally looks back up to Sam's face, he says. "Quit it, Sam, whatever you're listing or thinking, however you're keeping yourself apart from what's happening, quit it right now." But he doesn't even give Sam time to try and comply, he just grabs Sam's hair and forces his head down, and Sam is looking right at it, again, is seeing, and as soon as he sees he loses the strength of mind it takes to distract himself to the degree he's been maintaining, and he feels his face and neck blaze hot, his cock caught and trapped, Dean's hand on his thigh, his balls held up tight by the metal behind them.

He feels himself try to harden, and it feels even faster this time, he is soft, he is filling, and he is stopped, cannot go further, pressure-constriction-control, and when Dean lets go of his hair he doesn't try to look away and stop it. Dean slithers down so he's almost on his belly between Sam's thighs, just up on his elbows, head tipped a little so Sam can still see. Dean touches it, curls his hand around the base of it and runs his thumb along a long line of the metal. Sam goes even hotter, he feels like his whole skin is blushing, and he can feel it faintly, the edges of Dean's thumb brushing against the skin of his cock where it's pressing against the inside of the metal. He makes some kind of low, twisting noise. Dean tips his head and arches his neck and licks at Sam's cock with the tip of his tongue, at the slices of skin that show between the bright lines of metal, and Sam's body seizes up and he starts to curl forward, helplessly.

Dean groans, and Sam can hear himself, too, suddenly, a choking whine or strangled moan, something, something Sam has never heard before and can't really define, and it's constant, it just goes on and on and Sam doesn't know how long he's been making it or how to stop doing it. Dean slides two fingers across Sam's belly right above the cage, and turns to show Sam, they are wet, not slick wet but dripping fucking wet, and Dean sucks Sam's precome off his fingers and then dips down to lick it off Sam's belly, and then licks at Sam's cock, too, his tongue slick, hot torture, pushing Sam's body to get hard, harder, the beat of blood in his groin unbearable, Sam curling into it harder, back up off the pillows and his thighs straining against Dean's hands holding them open.

Dean curls his hands around the tops of Sam's thighs and drags him down off the mound of pillows and then pushes Sam down onto his back and climbs up his body, but Sam not seeing it is hardly helping, he can feel it and he can see _Dean_ , and Dean looks like he is, Sam doesn't know, like Sam hasn't seen him. He drops his weight across Sam's chest, all of it, and Sam loses what breath he'd had and Dean shoves both hands into Sam's hair and pulls so hard Sam has to arch his neck and Dean bites him hard. Sam's mouth drops open and the sound he's making becomes a wailing-screaming-crying sound, not very loud but very present. Dean groans and bites Sam's jaw and his neck again, and he kisses Sam's open mouth roughly, muffling that sound only a little, kisses Sam with both hands holding Sam still by his hair, and bites Sam's lip and licks his mouth, and shifts so the hard weight of his thigh is pressing Sam's cock into his belly. 

Sam screams a little, he jerks forward, curls reflexively, and Dean shoves him flat by both shoulders, and Sam arches instead, he can't tell why, he can't shift Dean's weight off his chest, off his cock, the pressure, the feeling of it, whatever it is Sam doesn't know how to name is _excruciating_ with Dean pushing against it, Sam thinks he might die if it doesn't stop and Dean is looking at Sam, his face all twisted up like it's excruciating for him, too. Dean kisses him again and Sam can't even kiss back, he can't stop the noise he is making and Dean doesn't care at all. Dean licks into Sam's open mouth and sucks at Sam's lower lip, and then he shifts his thigh off Sam's cock, and that doesn't stop the sound Sam's making either, but it changes it to a little whining moan, gasping and wet. Dean pulls back from Sam's mouth and sweeps his hands up to Sam's face, smooths his thumbs along Sam's cheekbones, and pushes sweaty hair off Sam's forehead, and doesn't touch Sam at all, otherwise, just looks at him. Sam tries to be quiet and can't, he tries to think himself calm and can't, he just shudders and waits and feels it when it starts, when it stops, when all the hot-need-constriction retreats and his body goes loose and shivering under Dean, breathing like before when he finally can hear it, hoarse and effortful.

He is stunned and overheated and he feels addled and he is still freaked out and overwhelmed, but he's clear that it's good, not why, he doesn't understand, he can't, maybe when he can think better, but, yes, good, yes.

"Four minutes," Sam says, when he thinks he can. His voice is whispery again, he _feels_ whispery, disconnected.

Dean kisses him once, gently. "Twenty-two minutes, baby brother." Sam says nothing. He believes it, but he doesn't believe it.

"I want to keep it," Dean tells him. He sounds uncertain, he's biting his lip a little, and Sam has no idea what's making him look like that. "I love it, Sammy, even if it freaks you out some, if you don't absolutely fucking hate it, I want it. I." Dean shifts his gaze away a little. He's still flushed, Sam sees, but it's not just that. He's sweaty, his hair is dark around his face with it, Sam can feel their chests both slick with it, there are still beads of sweat at Dean's temples. Twenty-two minutes. Dean doesn't say anything for a long time. Sam's sense of time is still probably fucked up, and it's still a long time. "I don't like the hinge," he says finally, and looks Sam in the eyes again. "That could hurt you, and I ain't even sure you'd fucking know it, but. We can get one without a hinge. Or, hell, I could probably measure it and make a solid ring to fit, or..."

Sam whines, helpless, he doesn't mean to, but he can't help it, it's the, it's that Dean will, God, he can't, "287," he says. "574, 861, 1148, 1435, 1722, 2009, 2296, 2583--"

Dean looks at him, Sam's face is hot again, because of the cage, because of the pressure, it's not too bad, he could still, maybe, but also because he knows Dean knows what he's doing but he can't help it, out loud so Dean has to shut up, Sam can't help it, he can't think enough to do anything else. "2870, 3157, 3444--"

"Sammy," Dean says, narrow eyed and watchful.

"3731," Sam says. "4018, 4305,4592--"

Dean tips forward so close that his lips are brushing Sam's. Not kissing. Just barely touching. "4879," Sam whispers.

"I'll make it just for you, Sam. The whole fucking thing, I'll measure you and make it perfect." 

Sam can't, he can't, his body is flush and hot and his brain can't do it, keep it. "Dean," he moans, pleading, and Dean tips his face to one side of Sam's and kisses Sam's jaw twice.

"I'll make it just how you want it to feel, Sammy, make it myself just for you," Dean murmurs.

"You," Sam whines, agonized, blood beating at his groin, all hot pressure and thwarted want and helpless constriction, and some pain, now, Sam hurts a little with it, overuse or tenderness or something, like being bruised, but it just makes it more, just makes it bigger, like it could swallow him, it does, he knows it does.

"And for me," Dean agrees, low and hot. "Look just like I want it to, keeping you all sweet and soft, Sammy, and the rest of you hot and shaking with it, Sam, I don't wanna hurt you, almost never, but how you look, how you sound, I will hurt you for this, I will, I want it that much, I want you this way, all tight and sweaty and fucking crazy with it, your face, Sam, like you can't stand it and never want it to stop, and you sound like you're three seconds from coming the whole time, Sammy, you sound like that right now, like you are about to lose your shit totally, I want that for me, I want to fuck you while you got it on, Jesus, fucking Jesus, I want to shove my cock into you while you can't get hard, Sam you will be outta your fucking mind, I know you'll be so tight like that, so hot and I want it, I want it. I want you all the time, I want you every way there is, but Sammy, little brother, I want this so bad I can't think anything but what will make you say I can keep it, Sammy, please, Sam."

And Sam is never going to say anything but yes to that, he will never, and all of the things, Dean knows the things, how it feels, can say the things and remind Sam later. "Yes," he moans, hitching, helpless. "Yes."

Dean doesn't say anything else, Dean is quiet and doesn't touch Sam at all, but Sam is too hot, twisting up against the weight of Dean's body, he wants to get hard, he needs to, he is going to go crazy, the cage is tighter, the want is bigger, all the rest of Sam's skin is useless, his whole body, none of the rest of him can help burn it away, it's too much, it's too big, he can't get away from it, and Sam only knows it is passing this time by the way he can hear himself whining again, and then breathing, and then Dean's hands in his hair, and then, then the need of it, the rough grind, fades back enough that he can live in his body again with it, just a low, dull ache.

"Close your eyes, Sam," Dean says after a while.

Sam closes his eyes and recites the suras of the Qur'an while Dean does things Sam can't think about; he doesn't stop until Dean tells him he can open his eyes, and even then he doesn't look. He can feel it gone, but he can't quite look.

Dean sits down next to him and pushes his hair away from his face, and Sam sort of loses his mind and crawls over and onto him until he's half draped over Dean's legs and has his face tucked up against Dean's ribs. Dean just spreads his legs a little to support Sam's weight on his thighs and tucks his elbow down so Sam can rest his cheek against Dean's forearm, slinging his other arm around Sam's back, a comforting weight.

Sam is spooked. Not freaked out, not anymore, but still spooked.

It's a sex thing, it definitely is, but it's also not. It's too big to be just a sex thing.

Fantastic sex can make Sam lose moments, make time a little ambiguous, but this is something else. This is something dangerous, he can feel it.

"In terms of safety," Sam eventually says. "I'm not sure that makes me any less helpless than the full restraints, Dean."

"I know," Dean says. "I will never use it without your explicit permission."

Sam blinks a little at that, at the phrasing. Sam knew Dean wouldn't already, he's not surprised that Dean is saying it anyway, but it sounds weird to hear Dean say something like 'explicit permission.' It's not that he thinks Dean doesn't know those two words. That's just not how Dean talks. "I know that," Sam says, and kisses Dean's fifth rib.

There's another short silence, and Dean says, "Can we shift just a little, Sammy? Your tether is cuttin' off my wind, here." 

Sam pulls back enough to see that the ropes running between his right wrist and the headboard are indeed curled around the front of Dean's neck a little, and hard enough that the skin beneath it is reddened. Sam moves his arm up and Dean turns so he's facing the foot of the bed more, and the ropes drape across Dean's shoulder instead.

Dean retrieves the bottle of Yoohoo from the chair and bumps Sam's chin with it insistently until Sam mutters crankily and gets an elbow under himself, still propped up on Dean's thigh, and takes it and drinks it until it's gone. Dean takes the bottle back, and Sam lets himself fall across Dean's thighs again. He could go to sleep right now. He wants to go to sleep, and knows that at least a part of that is that he doesn't really want to think about it any more, but he doesn't care.

He's going to tell Dean, but before he does, Dean asks, "Sam. Can you tell me if you're resting? Did that make you rest?"

Sam considers it. He knows the answer, but he isn't sure how exactly to say it. "No. No, not rest. I went away. It's not the same, it's. When I rest, when I know I'm doing it, even before I could put a word to it, Dean, I was still present. I wasn't thinking much, but I _could_ think. If I. Dean, if you woke up tied up, I know it's happened, when you woke up tied up, were you freaked. I mean really, insanely freaked out?"

"Yeah," Dean says. "Yeah. Pretty big freaking out over being helpless, definitely. If you wanted to tie me up a little, Sam, if I knew it was coming, that's different, you could do that. But I'm never gonna feel about it like you do."

"Because your body is your tool, Dean. Your body is what you count on. Your brain, too, you aren't just the brawn, but not having access to your body is not a good thing for you. My brain is what I count on. My ability to think. If I woke up tied up, I would freak, but not the same. I'm not talking about here, this is a separate thing, but on the job, out there, unexpectedly. I would freak. But I wouldn't freak as badly, because if I can think, I can figure out how to get away. That's how I think, that's how I _feel_. As long as I can think, I'm not helpless." He looks up at Dean, rolls over onto his back across Dean's thighs a little to do it. He can see Dean considering it, internalizing it. "That... it's good. It's a good thing, it feels good, I even want it, but not always, probably not often. It feels like I lose everything but my body. I can hardly think at all, and none of it is useful, it feels like I am barely even _there_ , and there are some good things about that, but it also scares me." 

Dean nods a little, slowly. "You started getting hard as soon as you saw it, though. Do you know why?"

"I thought it would be like the needles," Sam says honestly. "I thought it would look insanely hot, but that's really all it was. I didn't make the connection that it might feel like when you twisted the chain multiplied by about a billion. It never crossed my mind. I've never seen one before, I could see what it was for, how it would probably look in my head, and I thought it would be hot."

Dean laughs a little. "It looked pretty fucking hot from this side, Sammy. I mean, it. I." Dean pushes a hand through his hair and looks down at Sam. "I know it freaks you out, and I'm okay with saving it for special occasions, but. Sam. There's been things I wanted more, but they were all big things. I wanted you more than that, will want you if we never do it again, but I ain't sure there has ever been one single thing, a small, specific kind of thing, that I have ever wanted the way I want you like that. I don't know how to say. Not life or death things, Sam, not even the stuff I need, the pain and the punishment, those are all more important, but they're bigger, like you said, separate things. It don't make me crazy like it makes you, but it makes me a little crazy to see it make _you_ crazy."

"Even though it kind of freaks me out?" Sam asks, but he's not judging, he's really just curious. He can see Dean's want, he had seen it. He remembers how Dean had looked, at the cage, at Sam, remembers the things Dean had said.

"Maybe even more because it freaks you out," Dean says seriously, meeting Sam's eyes without apology. "Maybe more, because something like that, I can't have it. It ain't mine to take, it's important to you that it not be, so I can only have it if you _give it to me._ That you do it knowing just what it is you're giving. That just." He rubs at his hair again. "Sammy, that just makes it fucking hotter." 

Which is enough to make it hotter for Sam, at least in theory, that Dean wants Sam to _give him_ that power.

He blinks, and knows something. "I know why you wanted it," he tells Dean. "I know what it was to begin with, I mean."

Dean's eyebrows arch curiously, but he says, "We can talk about it in the shower."

"We just showered," Sam says.

Dean smirks a little. "Sam, your whole right side is sticky with precome, I'm sticky with laying up against you, and we both sweated so much we're gonna stink like hell if we don't shower before we sleep. I can tell you're ready to sleep. You got sleepy eyes, Sammy."

Sam smiles a little at Dean being practical, but says, "Okay."


	27. 27

Dean unhooks him quickly, and Sam merely looks away. Sam's legs are kind of wobbly, but they make it to the shower without incident.

"No touching," Dean says, and hands Sam a bottle of soap. "I don't gotta come again, not really, but if you touch me I'm gonna shove you on the floor and come on your face."

Sam holds the bottle of soap, undecided. He kind of wants Dean to shove him onto the floor and come on his face. Dean gives him a look while he soaps himself up, and prompts, "You know why I wanted it?"

Sam holds the bottle for another second or two, and then pours himself some soap and gets to work on getting himself clean. "Yes, it's what you said. You wanted to put it on me, but then you said you wanted to put me in it, see me in it, which doesn't quite mean the same thing. It's about my cock, that's what you wanted. Not really about me, but about caging my cock, putting it away, making it helpless. You wanted that power, not over me, over my cock."

Dean tips his head back under the spray. Sam can see him thinking about it.

They switch places so Sam can rinse off. Dean hands him the shampoo.

"You hurt me with it," Dean says, slowly, thoughtfully, while Sam washes his hair. "I want it, hell, I love it, but."

"But you still want to be able to make it so I can't," Sam says. "Not always, just sometimes. We can probably figure out something else that doesn't make me insensible."

"Huh," Dean says, and steps out of the spray to take a piss, not caring at all that Sam is standing right there.

Sam smiles a little at how quickly bizarre things can become normal and rinses the shampoo out of his hair, and waits until Dean wanders off toward the kitchen, drying himself absentmindedly with what is apparently the only towel, before Sam goes to the bathroom. What kind of place has six pillows and only one towel and one washcloth?

"Give me the towel," he says when he's done, and Dean tosses it to him one handed while he eats an apple with the other hand. Sam dries off as well as he can with what is now a pretty wet towel, and hangs it over the shower curtain rod to dry. He actually has a towel in his duffel somewhere, pilfered from some motel or another, but he can't be bothered with trying to find it. Or a comb. He finger combs his hair back out of his face.

"Hungry?" Dean asks when Sam is done, and offers Sam an apple. Sam isn't really very hungry, but he eats it anyway. His body probably needs it. He drinks a glass of water for the same reason. Dean does the same, using Sam's glass.

"I'm gonna tie you down hard," Dean says, watching Sam. "I think it'll help."

Sam thinks Dean is probably right, so says nothing.

Dean takes his silence as consent. "Lay down just how you want, how you're gonna be comfortable for four to six hours, Sam."

"Any way?" Sam asks, half-tempted to test the limits on that claim.

Dean gives him a look. "It's your comfort, Sammy."

Sam lays on his left side, a little over on his stomach, right knee cocked up, his left arm curled under the pillow. It's pretty much how he always sleeps. Dean looks him over for at least thirty seconds, and then says, "Move down the bed a little, Sammy. Far as you can and still be comfortable." Sam scoots down, and Dean looks at him for another long moment, then tucks a pillow under Sam's chest and belly. To brace him with or prop him up, Sam is guessing. So Sam doesn't have the gap between his body and the bed to use as movement later. Sam settles his arm over the top of it.

"This'll take a little time," Dean says. "Do I need to do your hands first?"

"No," Sam says. Sam isn't going anywhere.

"Do you want the blindfold?"

"No," Sam says. He'll close his eyes.

"Then you can sleep, if you want, while I'm working. I won't need you to do anything."

Sam closes his eyes. He doesn't think he'll sleep, but his eyes need to be closed anyway.

Dean pushes Sam's hair away from his face, and then starts moving things around, first just the usual noises, then some clanking, and then Dean is touching him a little, almost rocking him, and Sam feels him slide a slim, soft rope under his waist and then pull it out from the front, another under his ribs, two under his chest, two under his thigh, two under his calf, barely moving Sam at all to do it, just a hand tucked under Sam for a second or two.

"How do you know how to do this?" Sam asks drowsily.

Dean, who is doing something to Sam's right thigh at present, says, "That's one you don't wanna know about."

Sam says nothing for a few seconds, and then just says, "All right."

A minute or so passes. Dean moves on to Sam's right calf. Sam is starting to begin to see a vague outline of what Dean is doing in his head.

"Distract me," Sam says. "Tell me something else."

He can hear the smile in Dean's voice. "Can't you distract yourself?"

"I could," Sam admits. "But I don't want to. I'm almost resting. I can sort of feel it coming. If I start distracting myself, it will go away."

Sam feels Dean's hands pause for a moment, and then resume whatever they're doing. "Okay," Dean says. "What do you wanna know?"

"Doesn't matter. Just. Something I don't know already."

Dean moves up the bed and puts his mouth by Sam's ear. "Are we having a sleepover, Sammy?" he teases gently. "Trading secrets? And you wanna fuck _me_ like a girl." But Sam can feel his smile against Sam's cheek.

"Shut up," Sam says. "Jerk."

"Bitch," Dean says, and runs a hand down Sam's back to splay across one cheek of Sam's ass for a few seconds. He kisses Sam's shoulder, and moves back down to do something to Sam's waist. "Okay, I got something," he says after a while. "Something I didn't even know before we came here."

Sam makes a curious noise, but doesn't actually say anything.

"I knew you needed tying up to be still and calm, and I knew I wanted to tie you up apart from that, but it was to make you still for me. Not so you'd be calm, but for me, just to hold you down. I thought about it a lot of different ways, in my head, but it was mostly about how to move you around to get you where I wanted you, nothing much more than that."

Dean's hands on Sam's waist do something that makes a metallic clicking noise. Sam doesn't know what that is, has no idea, and is perversely comfortable with that.

"What I didn't know was how you were gonna look, Sammy. I did in my head, I had a clear picture, but it wasn't about how you'd look, not really, so I didn't know all of what it was gonna do for me." He strokes his hand all the way along the side of Sam's right leg. Sam can feel the places where he's tied down. There are a lot of them. Dean makes a low sound of satisfaction. "I didn't know how pretty it was really gonna be, how you look, your body and your face and the way you settle, I can see you doing it. I didn't know I was gonna want it just for itself, just 'cause you look so pretty and sweet all tied up."

"Too tall to be pretty," Sam murmurs sleepily. "Too big."

"Trust me on this one, Sam," Dean murmurs back. "You're so pretty sometimes all I wanna do is look at you. If nobody ever told you, it's probably 'cause they didn't think you'd wanna hear it."

Sam smiles a little, and falls asleep lightly, still feeling Dean's hands on him sometimes, but always gentle and soothing enough to ease Sam back into a soft doze. He wakes a little when Dean lifts his head to slide Sam's collar around his neck. Dean makes low, go back to sleep noises, and Sam does.


	28. 28

Sam slips toward consciousness a little when Dean's body heat leaves the bed, but slips back under when he hears Dean taking a piss.

The light coming on is what wakes him fully, and he blinks against it, automatically trying to move his hand up to shield his eyes. It doesn't move, of course, and Sam doesn't even have to wonder why. It's so familiar now, he just assumes. Sam squints until he can adjust, and sees Dean standing by the bed.

He can also see his own right arm. He isn't sure what he had expected, but it wasn't the careful ladder of thin rope lines spaced about four inches apart, all the way up his arm. He can see one rope running up the length of the inside of his forearm, threaded through the others. He thinks there's another one on the side of his arm he can't see. There are ropes on top of the pillow his arm is resting on, too, and when Sam tries to lift his arm he understands why he can't. The ropes around him are knotted into the ropes under him. He tries side to side, thinking the ropes under him should just slide through from that direction, but they don't. He can't tell why not for sure, but he thinks he can feel faint bumps that are probably knots. They don't feel very big though.

They aren't even really very tight, just barely pressing into Sam's skin. It's that there are so many of them that makes them work, not the tightness. If the rest of Sam looks like this, then it had to have taken a long time. Maybe hours. Wow. 

Sam starts to get hard. As soon as he does, he becomes aware that there is something around his cock, too. Rope, almost definitely, but not tight. Just loops, and they don't keep him from getting hard, though they are a little tighter once he does, which is immediately upon realizing what they are. He looks at Dean, who's watching him carefully, but calmly. Sam doesn't go insane, which is comforting. This feels kind of like what Sam had thought that the cock cage was going to feel like. It isn't overwhelming. It feels more or less like the rest of the restraint feels, except it's his cock, so it feels a little more. The rope is soft on his skin and it feels good where it touches Sam, but around his cock it feels like a gentle hand.

Sam tips his head down to see it, except it doesn't move. Sam's collar is tucked around his throat, but his collar usually lets him move a little. He turns his head and feels rope under his neck, running through his collar and presumably anchoring Sam to something, but Sam can't turn or raise his head enough to see what, or how, and the pillow under his head keeps him from moving in that direction.

He looks at Dean, who is watching him patiently. Dean is hard already, the head of his cock wet. Sam wonders if they could manage to get Dean's cock in Sam's mouth like this, and then is sure they can. That's why Dean had had Sam move as far down the bed as possible before Dean tied him down. So there would be room. The position will make it awkward for Dean, but it's possible.

Sam licks his lips and opens him mouth to suggest it, and Dean holds something out toward him. It's a gag, Sam recognizes it, the part that would go in Sam's mouth shaped vaguely like a cock. The front is a wide piece of leather with gently curved corners that bows in a little in the center, and it has a strap with a buckle that looks pretty sturdy. Dean's face is still when Sam glances up at it. Sam can't tell if Dean is making a threat or making an offer, and Sam isn't sure what he would do if he did know. He can see the potential for hotness in the gag, but he isn't sure he actually wants to test it out.

Dean tips it so the front is resting in the palm of his hand, mouthpiece up, and loosely grasps his own cock in his other hand. Sam watches him do it, enthralled even though he isn't sure what it means. Dean gives himself a long, loose stroke, and then tips his cock a little downward. A stream of precome drizzles down onto the mouthpiece of the gag.

Sam sucks in a breath, and feels himself blush, his whole body flushing with heat and prickling with sudden sweat, that Dean knows him like that, knows how to get to him like that. It isn't that Sam was unaware. It's just how blatant it is this time.

Dean strokes himself a few more times, enough to make the mouthpiece shiny in places, enough that his precome spots the inside of the leather. He lets go of his cock and uses his wet thumb to smear precome around the mouthpiece a little more. Then he tips the end against Sam's bottom lip and just slides it across the length of it.

Sam can't help it. His tongue darts out to taste it on his lip, and Dean presses the cool tip of the gag against Sam's tongue. That's all. Sam can hear himself breathing hard, and he still isn't sure he wants to be gagged. He opens his mouth anyway, a little, and Dean presses the gag carefully inside. It's wider than it had looked, feels bigger, but tastes so thoroughly of Dean that for a few seconds Sam isn't all that clear on what it's made of or what it's doing. He's just tasting Dean and swallowing as his mouth waters. Dean has it buckled and is pulling away before Sam bites at it a little, decides it's rubber, though it doesn't really taste rubbery, doesn't really taste like anything except lingeringly of Dean. It doesn't go far enough back to pose a choking danger, but it's enough to press his tongue down firmly and fill his mouth with what is shaped enough like a cock to make Sam squirm a little at how much just that by itself turns him on.

Dean is just watching him. Sam can see heat and want on Dean's face, but kind of distantly. Mostly Dean just looks evaluating, thoughtful.

"If you have any trouble breathing, any at all, button as soon as you know it, Sam," he says a little brusquely. Then he sinks into a half crouch near the top of the bed so his face is even with Sam's. He slides his hand between Sam's chest and the pillow, and comes out with a rope with a little loop on the end. He pulls it up and slips it over Sam's thumb. Sam tucks his thumb into the rest of his hand automatically to keep it there. "Mostly," Dean says, his voice almost easy now, "you'll see you got about an inch of play. Some places it'll be a little less. A couple I left a little more. Your hands'll be a little more, 'cause I didn't wanna worry too much about circulation. Move your right hand as far as you can to the right."

Since Sam's wrist is almost completely immobilized, the only way to do it is to stretch his hand to the side. Sam does, carefully. After an inch or so he feels a pull at his cock, and stops, eyes going to Dean's face. Dean just looks at him. Sam tugs a little further, and can feel the loops of rope moving up his cock, a low ripple of pleasure, not like a hand, too loose for that, but the way the rope rolls makes it odd and almost frictionless. It feels fucking great. Probably not enough to come, it's too loose, but still really, really good. Sam experiments with it until Dean puts a hand on top of his and stops him. When Sam relaxes his thumb, the ropes roll back in the the other direction to where they started, and Sam feels his eyes widen. He wants to know how that works. He bites at the gag a little.

"That's yours to do with what you want," Dean says, looking a little amused now. "But those loops are loose, Sammy. They'll slip off the head of your cock if you don't watch it. One or two won't make much difference, but you don't wanna lose all your loops, so I'm just letting you know."

Sam puts that information at the very front of his brain so he won't lose track of it. Even so, he drags his thumb over a little until he figures out exactly where it starts to tug. Dean's hand is right on top of Sam's, so he has to know Sam is doing it, but he doesn't mention it.

"I took a class," Dean tells him seriously. For a second, Sam has no idea what Dean's talking about, and then the context slips into place. Sam gives Dean wide eyes, and Dean smiles a little. "More like a workshop, I guess. Twelve people and a lady who knew what she was doing, and three people who didn't mind getting tied up by twelve people who didn't know what they were doing. At the time, it was something I did 'cause of who I was with more than 'cause I wanted to know." He gives Sam a steady look. "It was kinda fun, though. Showed us a lot of stuff. Nothing that covered this position, exactly, but enough that I could figure it out. And that cock trick is definitely the awesomest thing I learned, general knowledge notwithstanding. But the funny part, Sam, is that I've used stuff I learned there for hunting about four hundred times more than I ever have for sex."

Dean genuinely looks like he thinks it's hilarious, and Sam agrees, grins back as much as he can. Dean touches the corner of his eye, and then pushes Sam's bangs back.

"So, listen, Sam. I'm only gonna ask you one question right now." He touches Sam's eyebrow, just pausing for a second, then asks, "Do you wanna be able to see?"

Sam thinks about that for a moment, and looks at his arm. He flexes his biceps and watches the rope strain against it. He can see Dean watching him do it. When he looks back, Dean's lips are shiny.

Sam is clear that the question isn't just about whether Sam wants to be able to see his right arm tied down.

Sam gives the tiny little nod he is able to give.

Dean's eyebrows raise the tiniest bit, but he just smiles a little. "Okay." He stands up and disappears out of Sam's line of sight. Sam expects him to get back up on the bed on the other side, but he appears again about five seconds later and drops something on the bed right in front of Sam.

It's a dildo. A big blue dildo. Sam stares at it dumbly for several seconds, and then looks at Dean. Dean is looking back, but he doesn't say anything at all, and Sam can't say anything. Sam looks at the dildo again. It's still big and blue. Really big. Sam has seen them, used them, had them used on him. He is not a dildo novice, but he is a little freaked out anyway.

A little because it's big, but it isn't ridiculous or anything, just bigger than Sam would have chosen for himself, but mostly because the implication is that at some point, Dean is going to use that on Sam. In Sam. Considering all the rest of the things they've done already, a dildo is comparatively tame, but that's almost what makes it weird. Sam has done this before, he knows what it entails and that doesn't make it any less thrilling or terrifying. Dean is going to put it in Sam. Dean is going to look at it, watch it. 

Sam looks at Dean again. Dean still doesn't say anything. He just looks at Sam's face for a few seconds, and then disappears again.

The bed dips down behind him, and Sam doesn't roll toward it at all. He doesn't even tip. He is abruptly conscious in an immediate way of all of the places where he can feel rope on his skin, and that seems to be all of the places, like Sam shouldn't have any skin left showing. Then Dean puts a hand on Sam's ribs, and Sam can feel almost the whole splay of his hand, only two or maybe three tiny interruptions that have to be rope, and Sam isn't sure again. He flexes his thigh, and can't really move it, and it feels like there must be fifty feet of rope around his thigh alone. Dean runs his hand down to Sam's hip and Sam feels it the whole way, aware of the rope only as a slight drag to the way Dean's hand feels on his skin, even though he can feel the rope against his skin, too, lines of pressure if he leans into it a little. Leaning back pulls at everything on his front, though. Sam can feel the way everything shifts, and understands what Dean meant about having around an inch of play.

He wants to see what it looks like. He wishes he'd asked Dean to take a picture before he gagged Sam. He'll ask once the gag is gone, he decides.

Dean leans in close behind him, mouth hot against Sam's ear. Sam turns his head toward Dean as much as he can, which is almost not at all. "You don't have to do anything," Dean murmurs, his fingertips pressing into Sam's hipbone for a few seconds. "You can do anything you want, Sam."

Which... doesn't quite hang together. Sam can't do anything at all, and he has to do whatever Dean wants. None of it is Sam's doing at all. Sam can't even ask what that means.

But it means something. Dean has said it before, something like that, but Sam isn't sure when.

He thinks he should think about it, maybe would have, except something cool touches Sam's hole, slides slick against him, and then slips right inside, small enough that Sam doesn't have to exert any effort to resist or allow it. Dean slides whatever it is inside Sam deeply, and it doesn't widen, is just a cool slim presence, maybe another dildo, a tiny one. Whatever it is, Dean doesn't thrust with it, doesn't do anything with it except slide it out again after a few seconds. Sam only grasps its purpose when it slips out of him entirely and lube dribbles down Sam's ass cheek.

Sam's face blazes, and he is caught somewhere between arousal and humiliation. He shifts a little, unable to help it, and feels slick. It's harder to tell, he's still tight, whatever Dean had used not enough to really open him, but he's still sure. He can't get a visual on what it looks like, but he's clear on what it was used for. Sam kind of wants to push his face into the pillow, but can't. He closes his eyes instead and shivers a little, and tries not to think about what that looked like for Dean. Even as he does, Dean's hand shifts on his hip and he slides it down to Sam's ass and pulls Sam a little open with his thumb.

Sam breathes hard as his face heats further, and he squirms a little, helpless to stop himself. He isn't sure why it even bothers him, Dean has seen it all before, but it does. Dean doesn't do anything to stop Sam from squirming, but he slides a finger against Sam's hole, gentle, slipping through the lube, spreading it around. Sam shifts and shudders and wants to press back into it, wants Dean's fingers, but he can't move enough to do anything about it.

Dean slips a fingertip into Sam, and it goes easily, confirming that Sam is slick inside, wet. Sam sucks in a breath when Dean slides the rest of his finger in, no hesitation, almost no effort at all, no burn. Dean leaves it there for a few seconds. Sam shifts restlessly, waiting, and Dean eventually twists it and slips his fingertip along Sam's prostate. Sam's gasp is entirely without sound, but his back arches and he shudders. His thumb drags the loop of rope without Sam consciously directing it, and the loops slither down the length of his cock, and Sam breathes hard and feels his body clench around Dean's finger.

It's good, Sam wants more, but Dean isn't in any hurry. He slides his finger out and pushes against Sam's hole again, strokes across it and then rubs little circles that make Sam bite at his gag, and then slides it back in even more easily this time, almost frictionless. Sam thinks he might have added more lube, but can't think why. Sam is already pretty wet if he can take a finger that easily. Dean doesn't explain. He just slips his finger inside Sam again and again, so slick that it feels good, but doesn't stretch at all. Dean isn't even trying to stretch him. Sam has no idea what Dean is trying to do, but it's sweet, it's easy and good, so he's having a hard time caring.

Sam tugs on his loops and wriggles a little.

Dean pushes his finger into Sam, slow and rhythmic, sometimes glancing along Sam's prostate and sometimes not. Sam can't tell whether those brushes are accidental or not, and he realizes this is the first time Dean has done this to Sam. The other time he'd fucked Sam, he'd opened him with the gun, the time before that Sam has no idea what had happened. Sam's face heats again, and he has no idea why, just that Dean is watching and it's the first time, and it makes Sam squirm helplessly, overwhelmed at the idea. Sam tugs at his loops and lets Dean do whatever he wants.

When Dean slips a second finger into him, that's exactly how it goes, a tiny bit of stretch this time, but Sam is so wet it's easy. He squirms hard for a few seconds, tries to push back, can't, and relaxes again. He tugs at his loops and thinks about how it looks, thinks about the way Dean is still holding him a little open with one thumb, and hears himself breathing hard, catches himself trying to rock back pointlessly again. He bites at his gag and tightens around Dean's fingers as hard as he can just for the friction of it. Dean doesn't make a sound, but he tugs his fingers free of Sam's body, and Sam's breath hitches with dismay.

Dean leans over Sam, his cock pressed momentarily against Sam's shoulder blade, wet and hot. Sam leans back into it, but Dean just plucks the dildo from in front of Sam's face and it disappears behind Sam, the pressure of Dean's cock gone, too.

Sam waits. He can't do anything else, and the point of all that lube is pretty clear if Dean isn't going to stretch him any more than that, and Sam's imagination is too good, he can imagine it far more clearly than is good for him, and it makes it so he can't calm down at all, is shivering with wanting and waiting for Dean.

Dean moves around behind Sam for a long few seconds, and then fits the tip of the dildo, covered in latex, against Sam's hole. He doesn't say anything, just pushes. Sam relaxes and takes a breath, wincing a little as the wide head of it pushes past Sam's entrance, and then just breathes hard and writhes a little. It's big, it's forcing Sam open wide and it would be easier if he could relax and just take it, but he can't, quite, doesn't quite want to. He wants to feel it more than that, feel how slow Dean has to go and how it is big enough to almost hurt, would hurt if Sam actually resisted, if he weren't so slick. Sam is hot with it, the whole thing, the low burn and the hard stretch, and it's long, too, it feels like Dean is pushing it into Sam forever, and he is totally caught up in the way it looks in his mind and how it must look to Dean, and he is tugging at the loops around his cock ceaselessly, needfully, biting at the gag, and panting out quick, short breaths through his nose.

Dean doesn't fuck Sam with it, not really. Just one long, slow push to open Sam up and seat it inside him. Once it's inside, once Sam can feel the base pressed up against his ass, Dean just stops and leaves it there.

Sam tugs half-heartedly at his loops, thinking about Dean actually using it in Sam, fucking him with it, and feeling kind of forlorn.

Dean is doing something, but Sam can't really tell what, except that it moves the dildo around just a little, a slight shift and a little press, and then Dean reaches over Sam with both arms for a minute, doing something Sam can't look down enough to see. Sam can just feel it in the way Dean's arm flexes a little against Sam. Dean isn't even leaning enough to touch Sam with his cock this time. Just his arms. Sam still leans into it with his inch of play. It's still Dean touching him, even if it's only a little. A minute or so later, Dean leans over him a little further. Dean's cock bumps up against Sam's spine, just the tip, but enough for Sam to feel it, get a little wet from it. Sam shivers, and when Dean pushes something against Sam's palm, he curls his hand around it automatically. It feels like a twist of rope, like a knot. He opens his hand enough to see it, and it is a knot. Three rope ends twisted into a complicated looking knot. Sam stares at it for a long moment, then closes his hand around it and pulls. The dildo shifts inside him, and Sam feels a couple of ropes press against his ass cheeks, feels it tug along his thigh, caught in the crease between his balls. Sam can sort of see how it must work in his head.

He shifts and relaxes, feels the dildo slip out of him a little, and then pulls at the knot. It drags the dildo back inside, and Sam's body is already angled and bowed just by the way he's lying so that it drags lightly along his prostate. Moving his hand like that pulls at Sam's loops, too, and Sam's face washes with heat. He lays there for a few seconds, and then does it again, shivering and breathing quickly. He hooks his thumb below the knot and it pulls harder. It pulls the base of the dildo and two distinct lines of rope tight against his ass cheeks, which makes Sam flush more, harder, at what that must look like, what Dean can see.

Sam pauses for a long moment, and then does it again, working to figure it out this time. There are three ropes in the knot, and he can move all five of his fingers, so it doesn't take much to figure out how to get the right two ropes around his middle finger and make the angle even better for Sam. Then he figures out how far and how hard, and then how to make it work best with his loops. The loops aren't very tight and he can't get a lot of movement with the dildo, but it's probably enough to come, if he's willing to work for it.

He's not, though. Not really. Maybe if Dean was doing some of it, maybe even if Dean just said something about it, that he wants to see it or anything really. If Sam knew Dean wasn't just taking a nap back there or something.

He tugs fretfully at the knot, his loops, and it does feel good, but it's... it's basically just masturbation, and Sam can do that much on his own. Maybe not quite as intricately, and definitely not while immobilized, but. There doesn't seem to be any real point to it without Dean. He doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing.

Sam almost misses it, because he's resting. Not quite, not really all the way, but he's close to it, he's waiting for it, not working for it, he's pretty sure it doesn't exactly work that way, but feeling it, letting it, waiting for it. He's been waiting for it to happen since he woke up tied down and saw Dean with a hard on. Those two things together mean that Dean wants Sam to rest. Sam knows that even though Dean has never said it exactly like that. So Sam had been waiting, and as long as Dean was still involved, Sam had been sliding gently toward it, aware of it, but involved only indirectly, just standing back and letting it happen.

He isn't expecting a revelation, so it almost slides right into place, right where Sam can see the whole of it at once.

It bulldozes its way to the front of his brain, it happens like all of Sam's moments of connection do ( _”You don’t have to do anything; you can do anything you want, Sam._ ) things that he knows pulling themselves together from disparate bits of information into one thing, one fact or one solution or one idea. Sam catches it there, catches it before it fully seats itself and shoves it back. He doesn't mean to. It just happens, he feels it, grasps the outline, and shoves it back as hard and as far as he can, panic-driven, fear and shame, something he doesn't want to see, doesn't want to know, doesn't know how to even look at. He lies very still, very still, and tries to think of what to do. Dean already knows this. Dean has been doing all he can to reassure Sam that this is okay, but Sam knows it isn't. If it weren't freak-worthy, neither one of them would have had to go to so much effort to unearth it from Sam's psyche. If Sam wasn't already deeply freaked out about it, he would already know what it is. He wouldn't have to look. He would know already. Sam is not a coward, and he has almost always had a pretty firm grasp on his own motivations, but he doesn't now, and he knows he did that to himself. That it's big enough, bad enough, that some part of him has been actively working to keep it unknown. Sam hates that, hates the idea that he's capable of lying to himself so successfully, but Sam trusts his own mind enough to be totally cognizant that if he's doing it, he probably really doesn't want to know. He trusts his mind enough to make him actively not want to know, to take what he knows right now, and never ever go any further.

Except, Dean. Not just Dean wanting it, because Dean will let him if Sam says 'no more, I don't want to know.' That's why Sam has a button. That's why Dean gave it to him. Dean won't be mad, he'll untie Sam and kiss him and probably fuck him, and he'll make sure Sam knows that Dean doesn't blame Sam at all, is not even a tiny bit upset with Sam. But Dean will blame himself. Dean will think he did this wrong, and Sam has seen Dean's certainty, the strong, clear belief that Sam _will_ want this, even if Sam doesn't know it yet, and Dean will always feel like _he_ somehow failed Sam if Sam backs out of this now.

But. But that doesn't change that there is something that he is so terrified of that he has been keeping himself _blind_ , as though doing so is an act of self-preservation.

Dean leans over Sam and curls his hand around Sam's right hand. Sam has no idea why until he stares at their hands for a few seconds, and sees that he dropped the knot at some point and has his hand tight around his button, has his thumb _resting against_ the actual button part of it. Like Sam's body had been silently staging a revolt, making the decision for him, while his mind was still agonizing about all the reasons and the consequences.

Dean has to curl around kind of awkwardly to look Sam in the face, but when he does, Sam meets Dean's gaze. "I wish you wouldn't, Sam," Dean says simply. He slips his thumb along the base of Sam's thumb and eases it away from the top of the button. Sam lets him do it, watching Dean's face, which is set into uncommonly gentle lines. "Try not to. Not yet. Just try for me, Sam."

Just Dean's weight leaning against Sam from behind, just that is enough to make Sam calmer, and Sam knows why. Dean is solid. Sam isn't at all sure that he wants to go this way, but if he does, if he is, then he _needs_ Dean like this, needs him solid.


	29. 29

For a few minutes, long minutes, Dean just touches Sam, his hands smoothing down Sam's arms, his hip, his thigh, kissing each one of Sam's ribs on the right side with a soft, careful mouth. He does it for so long and with such certainty, that Sam lets himself let go of thinking about it, gives himself permission to not decide, to make no decision, to wait and see. He lets Dean soothe him with his hands and his lips, and soothes himself by going slowly through a quietly sweet and comforting list of times that Dean has touched him like this, to quiet and calm Sam, that starts as early as Sam's first memories, stops sometime when Sam was a teenager, and resumes after they'd been sleeping together for a little while. Sam has used this list before, but not for a while, and he thinks it's the first time he's ever used it that he didn't feel in some way guilty about it. Dean takes his time, and only stops when Sam is breathing calmly and is mostly relaxed, and is no longer actively holding his button at all.

"Okay, Sammy?" Dean asks.

Sam gives as much of a nod as he can.

"It's not as bad as you think," Dean says, both hands on Sam, one on his ribs, the other splayed across his thigh. "I promise, Sam. I promise."

It isn't that Sam doesn't believe him. It's that he knows he and Dean don't think alike, he knows they have differences in perspective so radical that it affects the way each of them perceive something as basic as reality itself. Sam believes that Dean believes what he's saying. But he isn't sure he believes it himself.

"Think about this, right now." Dean tugs a little at the ropes. "Just this, right now. I gave you what you needed," Dean murmurs. He shifts up, dragging his cock along Sam's shoulder so he can brush Sam's ear with his lips. "You got enough to get off, so what's stopping you?" Dean reaches down and nudges at the base of the dildo. It jerks a little inside Sam, shifts just enough for Sam to really feel the size of it. Sam sucks in a breath in surprise. He had sort of forgotten it, which seems a little insane in retrospect. Dean licks delicately along the top of Sam's ear, and his hand wanders up across Sam's hip and ribs, and then slides down the front of Sam's body, no longer soothing at all. A reminder for Sam, a physical reminder of what is happening. Sam's cock is still hard -- he can't decide if that's surprising or not -- and it takes next to nothing for Dean to bring Sam's body back to full attention.

Sam lets him, lets it happen, cooperates fully when Dean splays his hand and presses his thumb and ring fingers against Sam's nipples. They throb, low and dull with pain, at the same time that they spark bright with pleasure, still sore, and Sam marvels a little that he hadn't known that, that yesterday at some point before they'd slept again, Dean hadn't reminded him. Dean had been careful not to touch. Sam arches his back and breathes hard through his nose, and it's so much better with Dean's hands on him, he wants that so much more than he wants a very elaborate way to jerk off, it makes Sam's whole body go easy and hot with a mixture of want and satisfaction. Dean drags his fingertips a little roughly across Sam's sore nipples three more times, and Sam feels half-anchored and half flung apart by the sensation.

"It's not the gag," Dean tells him, sounding certain. "That's doing just what it oughtta be for you. You ain't made a single sound since I put it in your mouth. You could; it just keeps you from talking, not from other kinda noises. But you're quiet as a mouse, Sammy. 'Cause you know you're supposed to be. That's what it's for. You're doing it 'cause you know that's what you're supposed to be doing."

Sam hadn't... he hadn't thought about it. It hadn't crossed his mind. But he's sure Dean isn't wrong.

"And I gave you this," Dean says, and slides his hand down to Sam's wrist and hooks a finger under the rope loop around Sam's thumb and tugs gently at it. It feels about six hundred times better when Dean does it, and Sam squirms a little, helpless to stop himself. "And you're squirming so sweet, Sammy. If I tied you down hard enough, would you even try? Are you only allowed 'cause I left you room enough to do it?"

Sam breathes hard and tries to come up with an answer to that, and can't quite reach it. He only knows that it's not _exactly_ that, but not exactly _not_ that, either.

Dean shifts his grip up and catches the knot Sam had dropped. Dean tugs at it sharply, and Sam breathes out hard, the burst of pleasure so good, so good, he arches his back and tries to push back and can't, caught up in Dean's web of ropes. Dean makes a low sound in his ear. "I gave it to you," Dean whispers. "I set you up nice, Sam, and you can't, can you? It's only enough for your body, not enough for your head. What is it you need? What have you gotta have to make it right?"

Sam can't answer, of course, but his mind tells him it's Dean, it's Dean he needs to make it right, nothing less will do.

"That ain't it," Dean tells him, like he can read Sam's mind. "That ain't all it is. You still think you’re not allowed. You think you can't want things just for yourself. You can only want 'em if I want 'em, and it's been like that since the start. The whole time, since the very first time, if you think I want it you make it happen. The whole time, you only asked for one thing for yourself, one big thing, a thing you needed so bad you had to have it, didn't even ask me, Sam, you _told_ me. You know what it was?"

Sam does. Sam can pinpoint it so easily that it makes the rest of Dean's assertion nearly inarguable.

"What you had to have, Sammy, the only thing was that I don't give it to anyone else. Sam. Sammy. Is that really all you want from me?"

It's not, of course. It's so not that Sam's eyes well up and overflow, and he hunches a little in the ropes. Dean brushes at Sam's cheeks. "Shh, don't do that. It'll only make it hard to breathe, and I ain't ready to take the gag out yet. You'll only try and talk us both in circles if I do, you know you will. You can't help it. And that's okay, Sam, I know you can't, and that's okay. I don't want you to be anything but who you are, I promise. But I got stuff to say." Dean kisses Sam's ear. "Stuff you ain't ever gonna let me tell you any other way than this. Stuff you’ll never let yourself really look at without help."

And Dean is hugely, profoundly right. The idea that Dean might be able to do some of the work for him, make it easier, is compelling. Sam has proof already that Dean can show and tell; he'd done it all day yesterday, and it had been good. Not always easy, but good, and never awful.

Maybe it could be like that. Harder, bigger, but like that. Probably still terrifying, but maybe not as much, not impossible, not crushing Sam to death under the sheer magnitude of it.

Dean's fingers trail down the front of Sam's body, brushing bright against his nipples briefly, before skidding down across his chest and belly and closing loosely around his cock. Sam shivers, and sniffles a little, and works very hard not to cry even as Sam's cock jerks in Dean's hand, hungry for Dean's touch, even though he can barely feel Dean's skin through the loops of rope.

"I ain't good with words like you are, Sam. No matter how I try, it'd come all in a jumble. So this is how it's gotta go. I'll tell you what I can and show you what I can't, and all I'm asking is that you listen." Dean leans in close, his lips a little wet just beneath Sam's ear. He still has a hand around Sam's cock, just holding it. "Sammy, if it wasn't for the gag, I'd take your button. I'd break that rule in a heartbeat, little brother, I'd _make_ you listen."

Sam's breath locks up tight in his throat for several seconds, because he understands exactly what Dean is saying. Sam doesn't know everything, but he knows that's the big rule, the ability to withdraw consent, and even though Dean isn't going to do it, just knowing Dean wants to makes Sam flush hot with terror and want. He hardly knows what he's doing when he twists his right hand palm up and offers his button, fingers splayed, but as soon as he does, he knows it, understands what he's offering exactly, and still wants to give it. Sam never wanted it to begin with, Dean's rules, and if he does this, like this, he _can't_ be driven into cowardice by fear. Maybe this is another kind of cowardice, but Sam wants it anyway, wants it like that.

Dean tucks his forehead against the back of Sam's shoulder for a long moment. Sam can feel his breath puffing quick and hot against his skin. "It ain't safe," Dean says, but it's not a no. Sam knows it isn't.

Sam doesn't need it, he would like to say. Dean will listen, Dean will know if Sam can't breathe, Sam knows it. Dean will take care of him; Dean always does. Sam believes that, wants it, he _wants_ to give this over into Dean's keeping.

After another long span of seconds of Dean breathing hot and quiet against Sam's back, Dean says, "You don't even know what you're giving, Sam. And I won't give it back."

Sam shakes his hand a little, like he's trying to dislodge the cylinder of the button from the rubbery glove it's set into.

"Okay, Sammy," Dean whispers, a tremor in his voice. "Okay." And then Dean is using the edge of his thumb to peel back the rubber and plucking the cylinder out with the other hand. Dean holds it there, his fist white knuckled around it, and Sam can feel the thrum of tension in Dean's body, but Sam has gone loose and easy, his whole body, his mind, everything quiet and still. No choice now. No need to think about it again and again, no fear of his own fear, the chance that he might not be able to stand it, might choose to let his fear drive him. That is not a possibility, now. Now he can just let it happen, he can react however he reacts. He is more sure of Dean than he ever had been of the button anyway. Sam doesn't need protecting from Dean.

Then Dean surprises him. Sam can't see Dean well enough to see his face, can only speculate on why, but Dean cocks his arm back and throws the button. He does it with all of his considerable strength behind it, which Sam only really understands because the button practically detonates on impact with the wall, shatters with a brief peal of sound, raining to the floor in pieces. Sam starts in surprise, and Dean lays a casually possessive hand on Sam's right hand, and then drags his fingertips up Sam's arm, digging in hard enough to leave red lines up Sam's skin, catching and dragging against the ladder of rope still binding it down.

Sam shudders at the very thinly veiled threat behind that gesture, has no trouble interpreting it as a demonstration of Dean's essential power in this situation. It doesn't hurt, really, it stings, but mostly it just marks Sam up a little, but that's not what it's for. It's just to show Sam that Dean could. Dean can. Sam has no safety net.

Sam isn't worried. Sam is so not worried that he shudders again and leans back into his restraints, offering as well as he's able.

"Okay, Sammy," Dean says again, and lays a soft kiss under Sam's ear. "Lets get this show on the road." Dean slides his hand across Sam's ribs and over his hip and down to cup one cheek of his ass. He tugs a little at the dildo, just a couple of inches free of Sam, and then runs his thumb along the stretched skin of Sam's hole. When he speaks again, his voice is lower and harder, dark and edged with something Sam can't quite put a word to. "All pink and stretched," he murmurs, and pushes a little against the rim of Sam's ass. "If I fucked you with it, all that pink would go red and hot. If I did it long enough, you'd be sore, Sammy, all raw and hot inside. Even with that much lube, I could make you like that, sore and hurting a little."

Sam, of course, says nothing, but his whole skin prickles with hot sweat, and he and he can feel his face burning, stinging with want so deep it feels etched into his skin like protective runes, like the spell Dean had carved onto his chest, a thin burn of humiliation only making it harsher, stronger. "And when I was done, when I pulled it out of you, you'd be all opened up. I could see inside of you, Sam, see you red like I made you, a secret just for me. I could put my cock into you like that, and it'd feel just like it was supposed to." He leans over Sam to whisper in his ear. "Just like you'd been taking it as long as I wanted, just like you were wet and loose with taking it, and if I did that, you wouldn't think to try and stop me, button or no button, you'd just be glad, Sam, glad I wasn't done with you."

The rest of Sam flushes as hot as his face, and he sucks in a harsh breath when Dean shifts the dildo forward and back into place, but gently, without fucking Sam with it, without making Sam hot and swollen and sore.

"Anybody ever fuck you as long as you really wanted to be fucked, Sam?" Dean murmurs darkly. "Anybody ever let you fuck them as long as you wanted to do it?" Dean's hand crawls up Sam's body again and he presses his fingertips against Sam's nipples. Sam leans into Dean's fingers with his inch of play, and Dean presses harder.

"Not a rhetorical question, Sam," Dean murmurs, and uses his nails to scrape at Sam's nipples. Sam shudders and tries to think. He doesn't know, he's never thought about it. He can't recall ever consciously wanting more when the sex was done.

Sam spreads the fingers of his right hand and tips it up, the only way he knows to convey that he doesn't know, or can't explain clearly what he means while he's not allowed to speak.

Sam can't see his face, can't dissect his motives. Sam wonders if Dean planned it that way.

"No one has," Dean tells him, his voice dusky and certain. "No one ever has, Sammy. That first year at school--" Dean's hand drops down to Sam's cock and squeezes it roughly, an unmistakable punishment, and it hurts, it does, but Sam is still arching into Dean's touch. "--after you left, when you were trying to figure out how to be there, how you thought you was supposed to be, before you found a hunt and let that help you be okay in your head, were you kinda slutty, Sam?"

Another wash of heat rushes over Sam, and this time the edge of humiliation is harder, sharper in its unexpectedness and its accuracy. 

There is a little hurt, a little fear, a child's fear that Dean will be disappointed in him, that Dean will love him less, think badly of him, but it's only there for a few seconds. Dean had already told him that would never happen. More than once, Dean had told him that, and the way Dean says it means he had already known, been pretty close to sure, and they are still here. Also, Dean has been kinda slutty his whole life, and has never been ashamed of it. Sam lets that child's fear fall away, and finds himself even hotter, twisting a little to get his skin against Dean's, not sorry, not proud exactly, but at peace with Dean knowing this. Relieved.

Dean leans forward into Sam when Sam twists back; Sam can feel Dean's cock smearing wet at the small of Sam's back like affirmation.

"Yeah," Dean says, low and hot. "Knew you were." Dean pulls his hand loosely up the length of his cock, rope coils rolling against Sam's skin. Sam shudders, wants more, wants something. "You picked up girls and guys," Dean says with certainty. "But it was more guys, wasn't it?"

Sam doesn't answer, but Dean doesn't seem to require confirmation.

"Did you fuck most anyone who'd let you, little brother? Did you let most anyone who wanted to fuck your sweet ass?" Dean's voice is a quiet, grating sound, straddling the line of anger, but Sam doesn't think about lying to Dean. It isn't quite true, Sam wasn't entirely undiscerning, but in spirit it's close to true. He knows what Dean means. He nods fractionally and Dean bites him hard at the hinge of Sam's jaw, hard enough that Sam jerks a little in pain while Dean's hand strips Sam's cock roughly, the soft rope coils feeling rough and harsh with the pressure of Dean's hand driving them into the tender skin of Sam's cock.

"Did it help?" Dean wants to know. "When you were half-crazy with trying to fit where you didn't belong, did it help?" Dean still sounds angry, his hand still tight around Sam's cock, but Sam gives the tiny nod. Dean growls in his ear. "How long did it settle you, Sam. How long 'til you had to go after it again?"

Sam pauses and tries to think back. He hardly ever thinks about that first year. Sam almost never wants casual sex, and he'd had so much of it that first year, he had been aching and incomplete and a stranger in a strange land and he hardly ever thought about it once he'd started hunting again, once he'd found something else that pushed away that frantic sense of dissociation he'd been drowning in. He folds the fingers of his right hand in and extends two, the hesitates and adds a third.

Dean doesn't say anything for several seconds. Sam can hear him breathing hard, and his hand is still wrapped around Sam's cock, but he's just holding Sam now, not hurting him.

"All that," Dean says finally, softly, "and I ain’t saying you’ve got no other skills, but all that and what you came away with, what you figured out so well I ain't ever had anybody do anything even close to as good, is the way you suck cock, Sam. You had your ass fucked more than you've sucked cock?" Dean's voice is carefully neutral.

Sam's face is on fire, and his eyes are burning and prickling, but he nods. There is something tight and hard in his chest, and he is sweating like they've been fucking for hours already, and he wishes he could see Dean's face. He wishes he could just know, skip the part where he connects the dots and freaks the fuck out and just get to the part where he understands what is happening, doesn't feel flayed open and raw with Dean's questions. He's shivering now, something that is still partly want, but is also a hurtful dose of fear. He knew there would be, he went into this with his eyes open, and he knew, but that doesn't help.

"And your ass is sweet, Sam. I ain't had anywhere near as much of it as I want. But sucking cock works for you, don't it. That's the thing you really fucking learned, that you memorized like your lists." It's not a question. "It's what works best, it's what you worked out all on your own, a way to feel like you needed to feel for a little while. The only way you ever managed to get to where you were almost resting, all sweet and open and on your knees." Dean sounds a little angry again, but there's a thin, possessive edge to it that Sam clings to helplessly, needfully.

"I know what you think," Dean says, whispering now. "That when I say you need to rest, you think about it like it's something I want _for me_. That I want you to shut up all that thinking you're doing, that I want it 'cause I think you work yourself too hard and too long and don't ever ask for nothing just for you. And at least some of that's true, Sammy. But it ain't for me; you only think so 'cause you can't let yourself want like that, you ain't allowed to want like that, want so big and so hard.

"You only ever wanted one thing that bad, Sam, you only wanted to be Winchester-shaped, and when you couldn't do it, you didn't let yourself want like that anymore. And that ain't your fault. You were what you were made to be; it was us, it was me and Dad that didn't know what the fuck to do with a sixteen year old General or whatever. We couldn't take who you were. Maybe Dad never woulda, and I wanna think I'd of come around to it, but I was twenty, Sammy, and I probably woulda been a jackass with or without Dad there to be a jackass by example." Dean has his face pressed up against Sam's shoulder blade, and his voice is steady, even a little angry, but Sam thinks Dean's face is wet. Sam thinks Dean is crying for Sam at sixteen, and Sam at college grasping at something to replace all the things he'd ever known in his life that he couldn't have anymore, crying for what Dean sees as his own part in it.

Sam doesn't know what to do with that or about it.

And Sam thinks maybe Dean is right. Like Dean has an imaginary line after which he is responsible for all of Sam's hurt, maybe Sam has a more substantial line after which he no longer allowed himself to want so much that he could get hurt like that again.

"I can't take it back," Dean says huskily. "I can't un-hurt you that way. But I can give you this, if you let me, sweetheart. It ain't the same thing, but it's something good, something I think you're gonna want once you get your head around it, and, Sammy, it's the only way I know how to show you that you wanting just for you ain't _bad_."

It takes Sam a few seconds to realize that Dean is waiting for Sam to respond in some way. Sam gives his fractional nod.

He's already past the point of safety with Dean anyway. He'd done it without thought, the very first time, trusted Dean so much that he'd stopped thinking about where it was going deliberately as soon as he'd realized it was headed somewhere. Sam had purposefully not stopped himself from wanting Dean, had shoved through his own boundaries and refused to acknowledge them. It's too late not to let himself get hurt if he loses this. There's no point in stopping now. It's already too late, so he might as well have everything.

Dean twists his hand around Sam's cock, the rope burning and biting into Sam's cock and shocking him; it skates the edge of real pain, but it's so good, a welcome distraction, a welcome pain. Sam feels Dean shift down the bed, and when he strains his gaze down as far as he can, he can see just the top of Dean's head, his face level with Sam's hip. Dean hooks his fingers behind the base of the dildo and tugs it out and out and out until Sam can feel the ridge of the head of it tugging at the rim of his hole, Sam's breath hitching and hitching and helpless.

"This is just about the size of you," Dean says a little roughly. "It's a little longer, and I think you're a little wider, but it's close as I could come, Sammy." Dean shoves it back into Sam without warning, and Sam stiffens, his body resisting a little automatically. He's still wet, but it burns going in, a reminder that Sam hadn't really been stretched like he should've been, a rough press of hot near-pain. Dean squeezes his cock lightly, and murmurs, "You gonna fight me?" like he's merely curious, like he doesn't care one way or the other. 

Sam isn't, he has no desire to, and he doesn't understand the purpose behind the question. He can see the why behind some of them, he can feel the way Dean is telling him things, asking him things, that make Sam see small things, parts that will make more sense later. But this question doesn't seem like that. He doesn't understand it.

Dean tugs the dildo out further this time, so the flared ridge pulls free of Sam's body. He feels Dean shift a little more, and Dean still has one hand around Sam's cock so Sam can't quite tell how Dean is holding the dildo in place, but he feels Dean's fingertips skating around the stretched skin of Sam's hole, and Sam shudders, wonders if he's still pink, wonders if Dean is planning on making him hot and red and swollen. It kicks him in the pit of his belly, and he only doesn't moan because of the gag. He just breathes hard and tries to understand, what Dean wants, why he--

Dean shoves, he does it hard, the thick ridge of the carved head of the dildo a hot flare of pain as it widens Sam, and then in forever, it's so _long_ , and Sam's back bows, he tightens, it burns and he doesn't know what he's doing, if he would just relax it would be, he could have, but he doesn't get to finish that thought because Dean is dragging it out of him again, rough, twisting it a little, and Sam is twisting a little in response, half pleasure half pain, and if this is supposed to be illustrating a point Sam is not getting it even a little, his body hot and a little hurt but he is still hard in Dean's hand, and the only thing he's clear headed enough to wonder is if this is how Dean feels when Sam fucks him, if this stretch and burn and pressure is what makes Dean want it.

Sam can't ask, and Dean doesn't even pause this time, just pushes it back into Sam, and Sam realizes that Dean is avoiding Sam's prostate almost entirely, that Sam is getting a little just because of the width of the dildo, but otherwise Dean is missing it so completely that it has to be on purpose. Sam goes still for a long moment, breathing hard. He can't tell how he feels about it, it's all smashed into something indecipherable, twisting and angry and a low, sharp kind of satisfaction, something hard and edged and prickling that Sam doesn't understand. Dean drags it out of him again, twisting and rough, and Sam barely feels like he's directing his body at all when he jerks his hips forward, and he has just enough room, just enough, to tip the dildo out of him entirely.

Sam has no idea what he's doing, but he sees the connection to the previous question. He's not sure this qualifies, but it's definitely not cooperation. Sam has no idea what he's doing, but his skin is on fire, pleasure tangled almost cuttingly at the base of his spine, and there is definitely something about this that he likes.

Dean makes a low sound Sam can't categorize, and lets go of Sam's cock to cup Sam's ass cheek instead, dragging him open roughly, thumb digging into tender flesh. Sam jerks, panting, but he's used up all of his play, he can't get away from it, and that's not it, it's not that he wants to get away from it. It's something else, Sam doesn't know what he's doing.

"All red now, Sammy," Dean says, and shifts his hand so his thumb is digging into the stretched skin of Sam's hole. "Not open enough." Sam hitches in a breath, he's a little angry, he's a little afraid, but mostly he is trembling with something white hot and thrilling that defies definition, but something he recognizes, that thing he recognizes from before, the way Dean says it's supposed to work. Dean fits the head of the dildo back against Sam's opening and pushes in slow this time, forever, half an inch at a time, holding Sam open with his thumb, and Sam knows Dean is watching every inch of it. Sam's even more sure of it when Dean doesn't go all the way, drags it back, thumb sweeping along Sam's hole where he is stretched and a little sore now, and Sam is shuddering ceaselessly, his mind and his guts twisting with want, close to that place, nearly there. "How many times have you come since we came here?" Dean murmurs, and bites the base of Sam's spine hard enough that Sam tightens around the dildo. Dean shoves it in hard at the same time, and licks at the bite mark, pulling Sam wider with his thumb. "Don't know, do you?" Dean asks, and licks at Sam's hole, tongue slick and hot against sensitive flesh. "I know you keep track of stuff, Sammy, so why don't you know?"

Sam doesn't know, but it's worse that Dean knows that, it's awful, and Sam jerks, hot, angry, wanting, humiliated, and for a second he thinks he might cry as the almost-there feeling slips away, swallowed up by uncertainty, and then he's fighting instead, _really_ fighting. Dean shifts up a little, his grip on Sam's ass cheek going tight, fingertips drilling into the muscle, but he doesn't stop, and Sam can hardly do anything. He isn't as immobile as he'd been before, he's been held tighter, and this is entirely different. This gives him just enough play to feel like he might actually accomplish something, but it's an illusion, he's just as helpless as he was then, and he likes that. Sam likes the way the rope bites at him and he likes the way Dean's hands go hard and holding on him, and he likes that he can feel that it's still work for Dean to keep Sam where he wants him, not easy like with the restraints. Sam isn't even doing it to get away, not that, and he's not upset, he doesn't feel bad, though he feels a little like he might bite Dean if Dean's hand got close enough, like he might not be able to help it, do it just because he could do it, just to see what Dean would do. Sam isn't sure why, he only barely cares, he is almost-there again, he can feel it, just as good, just as near, different somehow, twistier, but Sam still wants it desperately, wants to fight. He just wants to, it feels right to fight, if Dean wants to do this to him then Dean should have to fucking work for it.

"So pretty," Dean tells, voice so low and hot that there's no question that he means it, that Dean likes it, too, and Sam can't help it, Dean's want always makes Sam's deeper, harder. Dean bites Sam's hip hard enough that Sam throws his body back to escape Dean's teeth, which shoves him onto the dildo hard enough to hurt almost as much, and Sam pulls so hard he can hear the bed frame creak protestingly, which also does something for Sam, something satisfying and smug, and if he could talk he'd beg, he'd beg, he wants to get there, he wants it _so bad_. Dean licks at Sam's hip and shifts the dildo, and this time the shove against his prostate is so hard and deliberate that Sam goes taut and still and can't even take a breath. "And still so quiet, Sammy," Dean murmurs, and Sam can tell Dean knows, it's in Dean's voice, hot and harsh, and he isn't going to let Sam get there. Sam can hear it. Dean shifts, and this time Sam can tell that he's holding the dildo in place with his knee when he leans up to talk against Sam's ear. "You don't know how many 'cause that ain't the point, Sam. That’s not what you're after."

Dean brushes Sam's sweaty hair off his face. "And I can see you thinking that it's me, but that ain't it either. You know that. It wasn't me you were thinking about when you was sucking off every guy who'd let you at Stanford."

Sam flinches, chest tight, but Dean just pushes his hair back out of his eyes again. Sam twitches into Dean's hands as much as he can, which is, of course, almost not at all. Dean ignores it anyway. "Shh, Sam. My feelings ain't hurt. I got you, and all the other times you been on your knees are nothing at all next to being on your knees for me that first time." Which Sam can't deny, doesn't even want to. Nothing before ever even comes close, just remembering it is enough to ease Sam's whole body, loosen him and leave him supported by nothing but Dean's ropes. "That's 'cause I know, Sam. I knew from the start, I thought it before I ever even touched your neck, sweetheart, and then I watched you 'til I was sure. I know, and you being the one to hurt me is always gonna be better than anyone who ever tried it before, and you're the only one to ever get the punishment all the way right, Sam, 'cause you know. It's gotta be you for me, and it's gotta be me for you, but I didn't make this want in you. I ain't doing anything but making you look at what was always there."

Dean shifts up a little more and leans around Sam, bracing his hand in front of Sam's face. The dildo slips a little way out of him without Dean's knee bracing it, but Dean doesn't seem to care. Dean twists around so Sam is looking right into his face. Dean is sweaty, though not as sweaty as Sam, flushed and heated, hungry eyes on Sam's face. But he just asks, "You fight me 'cause you wanted to get away from me?" Sam stares at Dean and can't bring himself to lie. He shakes his head a fraction. "You fight me 'cause you wanted me to stop?" Sam closes his eyes, but shakes his head again. Dean kisses Sam's mouth through the gag. Sam can almost feel it, a sweet kiss, soft. "Sammy, you fight me just 'cause you wanted to?"

Sam opens his eyes and looks at Dean. Dean's face is still and waiting, not quite calm, but patient.

All of this, all of it. Dean has been so patient.

Sam nods, throat tight, chest tight, fear and want twisting in his guts.

Dean leans in and brushes his mouth against the gag again. He pulls back just enough to lock gazes with Sam, inches away. "Good, Sammy," he says, steady and sincere. "That's good. And I will give you that any time you want it, Sam."

Sam had never doubted it.

Dean isn't the problem. Sam is the problem. Sam is looking at what he wants around corners, is afraid of it, doesn't want to see it and then have to think about it every day, like knowing Dean's rules would make Sam conform without Sam ever meaning to, like knowing their letters would enclose Sam in them, shut out the parts that don't fit, like being a Winchester was wearing a suit meant for someone else, like being at Stanford was like living in a world where everyone else was half asleep all the time. He wants to try to tell Dean, make Dean understand, because this is not the same, Sam is not the same, Sam's want is not limited to, defined by, any one specific person or event. Sam can sense the enormity of it, has known it since he woke up with Dean's cock already hot inside him that it was too big to know, has known it and has been ignoring that it ever happened like that.

Sam will never be able to un-know once he knows, and he will never be able to keep away from it in his head.

"It's not like you think," Dean says. Sam opens his eyes, not sure when he'd closed them. Dean is watching him, but not with patience this time. Dean looks a little sad. "You keep telling me yes, but every time I show you a little more, you dig in your heels. I know you got it already, Sam. I know I'm pulling it out, piece by piece, and I knew it was gonna work that way from the start. But I didn't know it was gonna scare you this bad. I knew you'd be freaked out and scared some, but I didn't know you were gonna fight me this hard. I knew you didn't let yourself want stuff for you, but I didn't know why. When you left us, I thought you wanted to go away, Sam. I couldn't understand it, but I thought you wanted it. It don't really change anything about what we're doing here, except it might take a while longer. But before I get into all that, you gotta tell me again. I know it's hard for you every time I make you, but I need you to, for me. So I know. And I won't ask again, I promise."

Dean pauses, and Sam waits; he can see Dean mulling over how he wants to phrase it. Sam knows the question and the answer, but he thinks Dean needs to actually ask it. To make things okay in Dean's head. Dean has said that to Sam again and again. Do whatever you have to do to make it okay in your head. Dean looks at him for another long moment, and then reaches around and unbuckles the gag. He tugs it carefully out of Sam's mouth.

"I won't hurt you. If I thought even for a second that knowing any of this was gonna hurt you, I woulda never opened my mouth about it. I know you don't know. I know you got pieces, and you don't even understand most of the pieces you got. But I know everything, Sam, and I know you're scared, but I am telling you, it's gonna be worth it. But I gotta have your permission. I can't do it by myself. We gotta do it together. I know you're gonna freak out some, and I can get you through it if that's all it is, but if you can't do this, if you don't wanna know ever, you gotta tell me that. And that's okay, Sam. If you don't want this, that's okay with me. Nothing is gonna make what we already got less. I'm never gonna feel like I am missing out if you don't want this. I ain't ever gonna think less of you no matter what. And this ain't a limited time offer, sweetheart. If you don't wanna do it now, but you change your mind later, that's okay, too. But you gotta tell me what you want right now, Sam. You gotta tell me, 'cause you don't got a button anymore, and I ain't asking again."

"I want it," Sam says immediately, and Dean doesn't do anything, his expression doesn't actually change, but Sam sees the lines of strain leave his face. "I keep tripping over it, I don't mean to," Sam tells him. "I almost, there was a minute where I could almost see, and I..."

"Almost used your button," Dean says, nodding.

"It's big, Dean, it's not. It's not simple, it's not like you want pain, it's _big_ , and I mean it when I say yes, but I keep tripping on how big it is, and how once I see it, I can't not know it's there, it's going to live in my head forever and I'm going to have to pick it to pieces and decide what the hell to do about it every day, and I start freaking out." It comes out all in a rush, and Sam is panting by the time he finishes it. Dean's got a hand curled into his hair, and is nodding.

"It's not like my pain," Dean says. "It's more like the penance." He is quiet for a second, watching Sam, which is good, because Sam needs a moment to absorb that. He's been cross-mapping. He's been drawing incorrect parallels, because the penance is a sometimes thing for Dean like the restraints are a sometimes thing for Sam. He's been thinking of them as the same in degree. But he can see exactly how they aren't, and he doesn't know how he feels about that. 

"You can hurt me most any way you want to, and I'm gonna like it. I can tie you down almost any way I want, and it's all gonna work for you. But the penance, it's gotta be done a certain way. I gotta understand why, and it matters what you pick, then it's gotta be the right size, and sometimes it's gotta be personal and sometimes it's gotta be the opposite. I know you know what I'm saying. It's more complicated. It's more about my head than it is about my body. This is the same for you, Sammy. I already got an idea what to do about you having to pick it to pieces and decide what to do about it every day. I know that about you. I think I know how to get around that. But we can't talk about that part of it until we get through the rest of it. If you're tripping on it, I can hold you up, that ain't a problem. And I know exactly how big it is, and I know in your head it seems even bigger, but it ain't _bad_. It's just big."

"I hid it somewhere," Sam says, feeling near tears. "I mean, sometime I figured it out, I knew it, and I put it away somewhere so far back I didn't even know it was there. I did that, somewhere in my head, I decided I couldn't know and I hid it so well I didn't know it was there, Dean!"

"I know when you did it," Dean says.

Sam says nothing, just gapes at him. "How..." Sam eventually says, "How...?

"You did the same thing the first time you fucked me, Sam. When it was done, we went on like before, and you didn't say a word about it, and you never asked for anything. You put it away. You put it away so it couldn't hurt you if it never happened again. You'd have done it the second time, too, if I let you. You ain't allowed to want. You woulda just kept taking what I gave you, and never asked for anything more."

Sam doesn't say anything. After a while, Dean continues.

"When I brought you here, and you woke up, I fucked you til you screamed, twice, Sam. I took you there, the place where your brain breaks, I told you everything there was to know less than five minutes after you woke up. I knew it wasn't gonna take, I knew you were gonna put it away, but I knew you'd get back to it eventually, when it wasn't so raw for you. You been thinking about it since then, Sammy?"

Sam's head shakes; it feels like he isn't even driving it.

"And the gun," Dean says. "You been thinking about that a little, 'cause I fed you dinner and we talked some, and it wasn't separate the same way. But you don't think about all of it. Did you know that you were crying the whole time?"

"I," Sam says hoarsely. "I didn't want to use my button, but I thought I was going to."

"But you don't think about how it went from you almost using your button to the way you fucked yourself right up onto the gun, do you? You don't think about how you were still crying after it was good, Sam, you never stopped crying the whole time, you were crying still when you came, crying and screaming. You don't think about what I made you say, you don't think about the stuff you said on your own. Sam. I bet you can give me a play by play of everything that happened yesterday, in the light. But almost all of the stuff that happened in the dark, you put it away. You know it happened, but you don't think on it, don't let yourself feel stuff about it. What's the only thing you're sure of that happened, the only thing you can think of all the way through."

"Sucking you off. I. Dean." Sam's voice is small and frightened.

"I knew that was gonna happen. I told you. I know how you think, and how you move through the world. I know what it looks like when you want something, and put it away. I been watching you do it for a long time. Since before I knew that's what you were doing. You can track sucking me off from start to finish because you've done it like that before, Sam. That's the only part of it where you knew exactly what you were doing and exactly where you were going, and you already felt like you could have it, and you feel like that because in your head it’s as much for me as it is for you."

Sam doesn't say anything for a long time. Dean is silent, too, like he's trying to give Sam time to think, but Sam isn't thinking. He feels like he's carrying too much, and it's taking all of his attention to balance it, and he's not thinking about anything else. He's just balancing.

"It’s gonna be okay," Dean says, and curls a hand around Sam's shoulder, curls Sam into Dean a little more. "Sam. Sam, who are you?"

Sam blinks twice. "I'm your brother," he says. His voice sounds as totally confused as Sam feels, which actually makes it easier to avoid contemplating things. "What...?"

"Who else?" Dean asks a little insistently, like he doesn't want Sam interrupting with questions of his own.

"I'm a hunter," Sam says slowly.

"Sam," Dean says. He puts his hand on Sam's chest, unerringly on the spell. "Who are _you_?"

In totality, Sam understands. Who is Sam? "Brother," Sam repeats. "Hunter, researcher, friend, lover, helper, student, keeper, fighter, killer..."

"Sam," Dean interrupts, and this time puts a hand over Sam's mouth gently. He moves it as soon as Sam stops talking, and kisses Sam, and threads his hand into Sam's hair. "Ask me that question."

Sam hesitates, and then asks, "Dean, who are you?"

"I'm _Dean_ ," Dean whispers. "Sammy, I'm _Dean_. I'm all the things you say you are, I'm those things, too, but I'm always Dean."

Sam makes a small, surprised noise.

"Baby brother, you gotta know. I'm sorry if it hurts you, and I'll hate it if you hate knowing, but you gotta know 'cause you are never gonna be able to just be Sam without knowing it's there. You'll always be thinking of yourself like a list of things you gotta do, sweetheart. You don't gotta do anything else about it, but you gotta know."

"And you won't just tell me?" Sam finally asks, his voice a crackling rasp.

Dean's expression flickers for a moment, and then he disappears from Sam's view. A second later, Sam feels him leaning against Sam, putting them back to back.

"I'd like to," Dean admits in a low, sincere voice. "If I thought it could really work for you like that, I would, Sam. But you don't work like that. You gotta know for yourself. It has to be you figuring it out." Dean shifts to rest his hand against Sam's hip. "I'd make it easy if I could, I really would." There is an uncharacteristically long pause, and then Dean says, "We can wait another day or so, if that's how you want it. We got time, and it might give you some space to think about it."

But Sam can tell from Dean's tone that he doesn't like the idea.

"You think I should already know," Sam croaks. He could really use a drink of water.

"I think you _do_ know," Dean corrects almost gently. "I think you know and you just won't look at it. Maybe you don't know how to, or maybe you're too scared to see it clear. But I know you ain't a coward, Sam; you never have been."

Sam is alarming pleased to hear it, even if it does put him on the spot slightly as regards his present situation.

“I want,” Sam says slowly. His mind is tumbling, and he picks the first clear image that surfaces. “I want to shove you onto your belly and fuck you till you _scream_ from the pain.” Sam shudders a little, Dean’s phantom cries ringing in his ears. “I want to push you onto your knees and teach you how to take it all, every inch, want to hear you choke, want to watch your eyes tear up, and…” Dean turns over and slings an arm around Sam’s waist.

“And,” Dean prompts, voice low and husky.

“And I want to be on my knees for you like that, again, I want that feeling that everything you want is okay with me and that all there is that matters is what you tell me to do. I want to fuck you so that it doesn’t hurt at all, I want to have you soft and hot with pleasure. And I want to wake up with your cock inside me in the middle of the night, Dean, like the first time, I hated it and loved it, and I don’t want to have to choose, except, except when I _do_ want to, and I want to let you fuck me raw, and I want to hit you with the belt, and I want you to hit me, just a little, and I want to really fight you and see who wins and gets to be on top, and I want to touch you everywhere anytime I want, I want the scar, and I want you to take it when I want you to, and I want that look in your eyes, that shattered look, I want to fuck you like a girl, and I really want you to fuck me like a girl, because your face, Dean, your face, and I want to let you to fuck me with the cage on and find out how it is for you since you want it so much, and how it is for me because it scares me so bad, I want suck your cock every day, and I want you to be mine all the time, and I want to be yours, but I… I want to do… there isn’t anything I don’t want to do... and I want do what I want. I want to do what I want.”

Dean’s fingers bury themselves in Sam’s hair. Sam is panting and crying a little bit, and he’s not sure he’s said all he wants to say. He can feel that there’s more, but Dean derails it by saying, “Yeah, Sammy. You want _everything_. You want to have it your way except when you don’t. You want to do whatever you want, and you want to not do anything. You want to just be Sam, and you don’t want to explain or hide or be afraid. You want all there is, and you want it every time you want it.”

Sam is crying now, low and hoarse, but not blubbering.

“I’m sorry,” he grates out. “Dean, I’m sorry.”

“Sammy, sweetheart, why are you sorry?” Dean murmurs gently.

“It’s selfish, I’m selfish…”

“Sam, stop,” Dean says with authority. Sam closes his mouth, though tears don’t stop sliding down his cheeks. “Remember, try to remember, that I knew this already. I came into it knowing what it meant. I knew the first time I touched you, Sam, I never went into this blind. It’s not selfish to let yourself take what you need. It’s not selfish to reach out for all you can dream up. You’re not selfish for wanting this, any of it. I want you to take it. I’ve been trying to give it to you.”

“But what about you? What about what you need?” Sam chokes out.

“Sammy, you would never in a million years not do everything in your power to make sure I’m getting what I need. You know that. I know it. I’m not worried.” He kisses Sam’s jaw. “And I ain’t exactly shy, here, Sam. I ain’t afraid to ask.”

Sam is surprised into a little jagged laugh, but it only lasts a moment. “How will you know?” he asks uncertainly.

“I know what you look like when you’re needful, Sam. It may takes us a few weeks to get to where I can see everything right on your face, and there are always going to be times when I don’t give you a choice, because you want that, too.” Dean’s breath is hot against Sam’s throat. “In a couple of minutes, I’m going to put that gag back in your mouth, even if I have to force you to take it, and then I’m going to fuck you absolutely raw with that dildo, Sam. And when I’m done with that, I’m going to slide into your ass, all slick and open and helpless, and I’m going to use your ass for as long as I can hold out. And you’re not going to be able to do a damned thing to stop me.”

Sam shudders within the curl of Dean’s arm, his imagination and the rough tone of Dean’s voice making it seem inevitable, like Dean had said, unstoppable, and he wants it, just to clear some of the jumble in his head, he wants that purely physical promise. “Promise me you won’t let me go too far. Take too much,” he whispers.

Dean is silent for several long seconds. “Do you remember what you said to me the first time you hit me, Sam? You said that we were the same. That we’d both do anything. You said you were never going to believe that that wasn’t true.”

“I remember,” Sam whispers.

“That you thought that, that you believed it and meant it, Sam, that’s when I knew you’d find your way here.” Dean strokes a hand up Sam’s side from thigh to ribs. “There is no too far, Sam. There’s just as far as we can go.” Dean pauses, and Sam becomes aware of Dean’s cock again, slicking up his lower back and ass. “Would it help you, do you think, to know what it’s called, Sammy?”

Sam has to think about it, just for a few seconds to really integrate the understanding that it isn’t just _him_ , that there are other people like him (and for a moment there is such a rush of relief at that idea that he shudders at it), that there’s a word for it, and then another minute or so while he considers whether or not he wants the information, the kind of information he’s been deliberately avoiding. “Maybe?” he says finally. “I think it helps just knowing there’s a word for it. That I’m not…”

“Messed up,” Dean says gently.

“Yeah,” Sam breathes. “Maybe let me think,” he says. Sam thinks about that for several more long seconds, and then pushes it away. Then he asks, “Will you fuck my mouth, first? Before the gag?”

“I will fuck your mouth any time you get the nerve up to ask me,” Dean promises huskily.

Sam feels himself finally relax in his web of ropes. “Okay,” he says finally. “Okay. I’m going to need to think about it more, figure out how to fit it into my head.”

“You mean decide when it’s okay to let it out and when it’s not okay,” Dean says disapprovingly. “I told you I had an idea about how to handle that.”

“What idea?” Sam asks.

“Don’t think about it every day. Don’t wrestle with it all the time, like it’s some kind of weight you have to carry because you’re you. Let me deal with it.”

“Deal with it how?” Sam asks, curious despite himself.

“You keep it in the back of your brain where it’s always lived, Sam. When you need something, you’ll know, and honestly, I’ll probably know before you do. But don’t think about it. Let me deal with that for you. It’ll be better for you if you just let me help you let it happen. At least for a while, until you got a better feel for it.” Dean sounds serious, thoughtful, even. “You won’t have to do it forever. You’ll adjust, and you and me, Sam, we adjust pretty quick. But for now, just let it go. You know what it is, you got a pretty good idea of what it means, so let me handle it. The rest of it will come when it comes to you.”

“Are you sure?” Sam rasps out. “It isn’t fair to ask, you obviously know, you’ve known what you’re doing this whole time, but are you sure I can do that? That I can put it away like that? Because if I can’t, Dean…”

“You’ve already been doing it, Sam, you’ve been doing it for years, and you’ve been doing it deliberately since you and me started fucking; you already know how to keep it at the back of your mind and outta your way,” Dean says. “I’m sure. And you’ll adjust, you’re gonna be shocked at how fast it happens. Every time, that corner of your mind you’re keeping it in will get a little clearer, and soon you won’t remember why this scared you so bad.”

Sam wants to believe it enough that he is willing to try; Dean isn’t wrong. It’s not like it hasn’t already been in Sam’s head all along.

“I want to suck you,” Sam says softly. “It will all be easier in my head if your cock is in my mouth.”

Dean lets out a harsh breath, and Sam feels precome slip down his lower back in a trickle. “It probably won’t take long,” he warns.

Sam hesitates for just a second, and then lets himself ask for what he wants. “Hold out as long as you can?”

Dean is up and off the bed, circling around it. When Sam can see him again, he has a knife in his hand. Sam doesn’t find it alarming at all, and all Dean does with it is slice the rope that’s running through his collar, so that Sam can move his head a little more easily. Sam just tips it back as far as the collar will let him, and waits for Dean to put the knife aside and then maneuver himself into the scant space between Sam’s face and the headboard.

“Gonna be a little awkward, Sammy,” Dean says, just by way of warning.

Sam doesn’t care about awkwardness; he cares about getting Dean’s cock in his mouth, which is already watering, just because he can see Dean’s cock, see the slickness where Dean has dripped precome. He opens his mouth, and Dean twists his body downward and at an angle, and pushes his cock into Sam’s mouth, just a few inches, but enough for Sam to taste him, and to feel how it makes him feel, like he’s allowed, and he groans a little. Dean rocks into his mouth, just that first few inches, and then he makes a rough sound that Sam recognizes, a sound that means he can’t wait, and pushes in further, not as far back as Sam can take it, but maybe as far as it will go in this position.

Dean fists one hand in Sam’s hair, shooting live current through every part of Sam’s body, and uses the other to brace himself with the headboard, and then leans forward, just far enough, just far enough that Sam can feel the head bumping up against the back of his throat. Sam groans an encouragement, and Dean murmurs, “Jesus, Sam, you should see how you look right now,” and then pulls back and rocks forward again, slow at first, probably while Dean firms up his balance, and then rough, rougher than Dean has probably ever been with him, even before when Sam had been upside down with this throat wide open. Dean batters at him with his cock, rocks in fast and hard, and Sam is half-moaning and half-whining at it, and choking any time Dean shoves far enough back, and it’s perfect. Sam curls his tongue around Dean’s shaft, he hollows his cheeks and he lets himself ignore the scrape of teeth -- each time it happens, Dean shudders and jerks -- and Sam is sure that Dean had meant it when he’d said it wouldn’t take long, but Dean holds off, does what Sam had asked for, and that is good both because the longer he has Dean’s cock in his mouth, the happier he is, and also because Dean does it for Sam, just because he’d asked.

He wallows in it, he isn’t sure how long, but he knows by Dean’s breathing and the way his thighs are shaking when it’s almost done, and he pulls back a little deliberately, as much as he can, and the next time Dean thrusts in, Sam bites him deliberately, not hard, but hard enough that his teeth drag along the whole length, and Dean cries out a little, his hand in Sam’s hair tightening as he holds him still, and comes with a grating cry, rocking his hips a little, feeling Sam’s teeth pressed against his flesh. When come stops spurting across Sam’s tongue, he lets up carefully, and Dean draws back slowly. Sam can feel him trembling, all the places Dean is touching him shivering, and when he opens his eyes, Dean is staring at him with something like disbelief mixed with gratitude. The marks of Sam’s teeth on his cock are clear, bright red and raw looking. Some atavistic part of Sam’s brain is compelled to stare at them, eager and possessive.

“You should see how you look right now,” Sam echoes a little hoarsely, and Dean blinks away a little of the glassy-eyed shock, and folds himself downward to kiss Sam hard, all heat and demand and teeth, until Sam can barely breathe.

Then Dean gets up and goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of Yoohoo. He opens it and produces a straw from somewhere, and brings it back over to the bed for Sam. Sam drinks thirstily, soothing his raw throat, though he feels a definite pang about the loss of the taste of Dean’s come in his mouth. Dean sets the bottle somewhere behind Sam, on what must be that table of sexual paraphernalia. He retrieves a tube of lube at the same time, not bothering to try to hide it.

“You got all your loops, Sammy?” he asks, his smile faint, but the crinkles around his eyes deep.

Sam, who had kind of lost track of things -- why didn’t he use his loops while he was sucking Dean’s cock? That would have been so good, he’ll have to ask Dean to do it for him again so that Sam can try -- either during his melt down or during the blow job, checks with his thumb, and feels the loops of rope roll heatedly along his cock.

“Yeah,” he says. He watches Dean pick up the gag, pause for a moment to look at Sam, and then make an obvious decision.

“I still want the gag, but you ain’t got a button anymore, Sam. I’m confident I’ll know if you’re in trouble, but if you ain’t confident, this is the time to speak up,” Dean says seriously.

“I’m not worried,” Sam says truthfully, and opens his mouth when Dean tips the gag toward his lips. It doesn’t taste of Dean this time, which is always going to be a shame, but something about it is good that hadn’t really been good last time. It takes Sam a few seconds to realize that it’s familiarity. He knows how it works; he knows what it’s supposed to do.

He had known, then, too, but he hadn’t thought about it until Dean had pointed it out. Now he understands and it loosens something in his mind, makes him feel a little soft-edged, and this is the beginning part of resting easy. He suspects he knows what it’s called by it’s proper name, but he likes Dean’s phrase for it.


	30. 30

The bed dips behind Sam, and he hadn’t even realized that Dean had moved. He braces himself for the removal of the dildo, but Dean goes slow and gentle. This time he slicks up Sam’s ass with whatever that small thing is again, but he slicks the dildo as well. Sam guesses Dean would use fingers, too, but Sam is pretty well stretched just from what has already happened. 

When Dean presses it against Sam’s hole, Sam shivers into goosebumps, but he doesn’t feel the need to fight again, and while the head is still enough to burn with red pain as it enters, the rest of the shaft is slick and easy going in. Sam arches his back, and Dean splays a hand between his shoulderblades, holding him still, tugging it out and then pressing it in again, not too hard but fast enough for the friction to make Sam’s breath speed up. He uses his loops on the next inward thrust, and arches against Dean’s hand, it’s so good, and he’s still a little raw from before, so it’s weirdly soothing, pressing up cool and slick with lube into him. Dean twists it around until it’s bumping against Sam’s prostate, and Sam can barely rock his hips back into it, but can’t stop himself from trying.

Dean shifts the hand between Sam’s shoulder blades down to cup one cheek of his ass and pull Sam open, and Sam shudders with a blend of excitement and humiliation that seems to wash away a little more of his higher thought processes.

“You look so good, taking it,” Dean murmurs. “Better if it was my cock, but I’m gonna seriously invest in a stockpile of things I can shove into your ass, Sammy, just to watch you take ‘em.” Sam shivers and a small sound of want escapes him, but it’s strangled to death by the gag. “Make noise if you want to,” Dean says, voice low. “The gag is as much for me as it is for you. I don’t want you talking, but the rest of it, do just how it feels right to do.”

Sam isn’t sure how it feels right to do until Dean picks up the pace with the dildo, still shoving it up against Sam’s prostate until Sam can’t stop the wanting little cries that push their way up through his body and are muffled into senselessness behind the gag. And Dean isn’t done, and it’s not that Sam had forgotten what he’d said, but the transition is gradual, and Sam amps up that way, too, gradually, until he really starts to feel how roughly Dean is using the dildo in him, as rough as Dean had fucked his mouth, still ramming it against Sam’s prostate in a way that eclipses some of the pain, but Dean is making good on his promise to fuck Sam raw with it. As soon as he realizes it, Sam’s thoughts unravel a little more, until he’s still trying to rock back into each stroke, but he’s also shouting at the burn of them, at the way that they drag at him inside, and he’s also desperate to come, so there are helpless little moans mixed in with all the sounds, and his loops are amazing, they are taking him so close that Sam is shivering almost constantly, but he has, there is this thing that Sam recognizes, the thing that makes him need Dean to come first, the thing that makes Sam _allowed_ to come, and he knows it doesn’t make sense, he knows he should be allowed to come any time he can get there, he knows that the loops are practically permission, almost explicit permission, for Sam to come whenever he can, but he still _wants_ , feels like he needs, and Sam can’t tell Dean, can only moan behind the gag, feeling like he’s being wound up like a watch.

Dean is the best brother, though, the best lover, the best whatever it is he is, because he pauses, eventually, he stops, and leans over so that he can look at Sam’s face. “You can’t. Not even with permission,” Dean says, his gaze serious. It isn’t quite right, because he can sometimes, like when Dean sucked his cock, but usually it is right, and Sam nods shallowly, feeling tears swimming in his eyes. Dean, though, he doesn’t look like hearing it is a bad thing at all. His eyes go sharp like cut green glass, and there’s the suggestion of something hard and possessive in the lines of his face. He says, “I’m going to fuck you, now, Sammy. You can use your loops as much as you want, but remember not to lose them, because I’m not touching your cock after I come.” There is the slightest twist of cruelty in Dean’s tone, and Sam’s eyes overflow with tears, but he nods, and feels it, that white breaking place, close now.

Dean leans back again, out of Sam’s line of sight, and carefully pulls the dildo free. Dean runs a finger around the inside of Sam’s hole, and says gruffly, “Stretched out nice and wide for me, Sam. I’m gonna fuck you as long as I can wait, gonna give you as much as you can stand, because you need it to be as much as you can stand, don’t you?”

Sam feels Dean pushing him toward the place Sam wants so badly to go, and can’t do anything but nod and make a helpless little sound behind the gag.

“You can do this to me some time, Sam. Fuck me as long as you really want to fuck me, until it’s as much as you can stand. You need it to be that way, you need to be on the edge of what you can handle, baby brother.”

Dean cock is slick when he slides it inside, and it’s nothing like the dildo. Smaller, but not by any huge amount, but Sam’s ass clamps down around it immediately, and it’s not that. Dean is hot inside him, hot and real and alive, his skin drags at Sam’s hole inside, Dean’s cock jerks when Sam goes as tight as he can, and he makes harsh noises against Sam’s shoulder as he drives his cock into Sam roughly, like with Sam’s mouth, like with the dildo, rough and fast and hard, Dean’s whole body bunching with muscle along Sam’s back, the force of it shoving at the ropes enough that Sam can feel them biting into his skin in a way that he couldn’t before, and Sam is frantic with his loops, but careful, careful, and even still he loses one and cries out with dismay behind the gag.

“God, you feel good, Sam,” Dean says. “I been wanting you so long, you got no idea, and you’re perfect, I knew you’d be perfect, but it’s still better than I ever imagined. I want to fuck you every time I look at you, and now that I know how much you love it, it’s just worse, like I can’t imagine what it would be like not to get to fuck you, feel you tight and so hot, hot as blood around my cock, and the way you want it, pushing back even though you ain’t got enough room to do anything with it, Sam, you’re so fucking pretty on my cock.”

Sam feels his mind unreeling, he is groaning desperately behind the gag, and he is close, not to coming, though he’s close to that, too, but close to that perfect place, the place Dean had shown him briefly in the hotel, the place where Sam had gone to and then hidden from their first night here, the place where he had gone with the gun, he’s so close and he needs it.

“Are you with me, Sam?” Dean asks, some time later, a long time, Sam is sore and his body feels completely relaxed except for where he’s clenching around Dean’s cock and tugging the loops needfully around his cock. Sam manages a nod, and Dean kisses the hinge of his jaw and then bites down on it hard. “I need to come, Sam, need to fill you up with my come, need it inside deep.” Sam can feel Dean’s body jerking a little against his, and guesses that Dean has been needing it for some time, that he’s reached the end of his endurance, and Sam is suddenly weeping almost silently. Dean reaches around Sam and presses against this sore nipples, and Sam goes taut and tight, and Dean grinds out, “Yeah, Sammy, yeah, God, yeah,” and his hips shove against Sam’s ass, twisting, and Sam feels the jerk of his cock in Sam’s body and then the hot shudder of Dean’s exhalation, and then the slickness, and Sam jerks his loops hard, all of them off at once, as fast as he can, and screams when he comes, his whole body seeming to convulse into orgasm, something so good, better than anything, something that pushes Sam out of his mind into that white space of genuine ecstasy, mindless need-want-pleasure-desire finally fulfilled, and there is nothing but that for a time, Sam doesn’t know how long.

He knows when he blinks slowly, his eyelashes still wet, that Dean has taken the gag out of his mouth, and that Dean is watching him like a hawk, his gaze both smug and kind, the kind of expression only Dean can pull off. Dean is holding a knife again and Sam fails to be worried about it in any way. He snags the bottle of Yoohoo in his free hand, bringing it down so Sam can reach the straw, and Sam drinks until it’s gone. The bottle vanishes again. Sam doesn’t care where it goes.

“You resting easy, Sam?” Dean asks, but not like he’s worried about the answer.

“So easy,” Sam whispers.

“I could untie you, but it would take me a couple of hours, and I’m not all that attached to this rope. The quick way work for you?” Dean asks.

“Get a picture?” Sam asks, vaguely remembering wanting one.

“Took a few last night,” Dean admits easily.

“Okay,” Sam agrees.

Dean doesn’t go for any of the ropes wrapped around Sam at all. He neatly slices all the ropes touching the mattress, and once he does, he just gives Sam a little shove, and most of what’s holding him down just slithers away. Dean only has to cut Sam’s hands free, after that, and Sam is just lying there in a pile of loose rope.

“Are you hungry?” Dean asks, eyes gentle now.

“Yes, but not yet. I want to ask you. Come up here.”

Dean puts the knife somewhere and rolls Sam a little pulling the pillow out from in front of him, and climbs back into bed, their faces inches apart on the same pillow, their legs seeming to tangle together automatically. Dean has a hand on Sam’s ribs, just resting there, looking Sam full in the face in the bright light, seeming unconcerned by the way they can clearly see each others’ faces.

“What I know from porn,” Sam says, and watches Dean smirk a little at the confirmation that Sam watches porn (Dean has always insisted that Sam does, but hasn’t ever been able to prove it; Sam is just better at hiding things on the computer than Dean is at finding them.) “I know the letters,” he says, feeling so good and so mellow and so lucid at the same time that knowing feels safe now. Saying what he knows, and asking about what he doesn’t know, feels safe. “BDSM,” Sam says. “And the other major classification, sub/Dom. You’re a dominant masochist?”

“Close enough to be within spitting distance,” Dean agrees.

“That seems like an unusual juxtaposition,” Sam says, partly a question.

“It’s not all that common, but it’s not really all that uncommon either. It depends on degree, and the letters, Sam, they don’t tell everything there is to know about a person.”

Sam nods. Dean’s eyes are very green. “And I’m a B, but it seems like you’re kind of a D, too.”

“We’re both B’s,” Dean says. “For you, it’s that you like bondage. For me it’s that I like tying you up. And, yeah, loosely, anyway, I like discipline. And you’re good at it, but maybe still trying to decide how you feel about it.”

“The spanking was really good,” Sam says, and Dean’s eyes darken a little, but he nods. “But I don’t see where else I fit. I don’t think of myself as a sadist.”

“You’re on the low end, but think about how it makes you feel to hurt me, Sammy. Sometimes what you are depends on who you’re with. You do that for me, but don’t kid yourself that you don’t get off on it. Maybe you wouldn’t or couldn’t with anyone else, but for me, you’re enough of a sadist to qualify.”

Sam thinks about that for a few easy seconds, and he can see. “Okay. But I get hung up on the dominance and submission for me. I don’t fit, even though I can sort of see some times when I’ve done one or the other.”

Dean grins, looking almost excited. “This is what I wanted to tell you, when I asked if you wanted to know what it was called,” he says. “You’re a switch, Sammy. The first one I ever met, as strong as you, as balanced.”

Sam frowns a little, turning that word over in his head. “So I can be both, or either.”

“You’re both,” Dean says. “All the time. Just sometimes you’ll want to be one and sometimes you’ll want to be the other.”

“But how do I know?” Sam asks.

“Sammy,” Dean says kindly. “Have you had any trouble figuring it out so far?”

Sam considers that, too. “But how will _you_ know?” he asks finally.

Dean cocks his head a little. “Maybe every once in a while, I won’t,” he says. “But mostly I’ll know because I know you, and I know what you look like when you’re wanting, and the things you want look different. There is a big difference between how you look when you want to suck my cock and how you look when you want to fuck me.”

“A switch,” Sam says thoughtfully, still so calm it feels like he’ll never worry again. “But it’s different. When you tell me what to do and I find that place in my head, _this_ place… How do I do that when I want to tell you what to do?”

“I don’t know everything about it,” Dean caveats, “but Sam, the day you pushed me down and fucked me on the floor, how did that feel to you?”

“Powerful,” Sam says at once. He doesn’t have to think about it. “And you were… amazing. You were perfect. That was just as important.” Sam blinks. “That was what I wanted. I mean, I came so hard, and you were completely docile, and I wanted that, too. That was so good, Dean. But the way you were, I could see it. And that was part of it.”

Dean nods. “You’ll get that from me with the… penance. And you’re welcome to it any time you can take it, Sam. I’m not even saying I don’t like subspace. But it ain’t my natural state. But that’s okay, because you’re on the fierce side of dominance, and I’m kind of lower on that scale than you are. When you need it, you’ll be able to take it.”

Sam says, “I don’t want to take things you don’t want to give.”

“You won’t,” Dean says, with confidence. “One of the thing about most switches, and understand that what I know is mostly hearsay, but what it means to be a switch is that you can do either, both, but also that you have a way of feeling how it should be. It’s something I can do because I know you, but Sam, you’ve been doing it the whole time. It’s just a thing you process without really needing to think about it. I’m not saying there won’t be times when you want something specific, and mostly if you want that, I’m happy to give it to you. But you said…” Dean pauses, looking at Sam intently. “When you were telling me what you wanted, when you were listing it all out Sammy, one of the things you said was that you wanted to fight me for it, to really fight and see who wins and gets to be on top. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” Sam says, shivering a little at the idea.

“Well, sometimes I’m not going to let you push me into subspace, and that’s what we’ll do. We’ll fight for it, maybe with actual punches, or maybe with something more like sexual guile, and we’ll see who comes out on top.” 

It’s the second time Dean has said the word, so Sam asks, “That’s what resting easy is? Subspace. Meaning when someone is in a submissive… state of mind?”

“The definition is more or less right, but that ain’t what I mean exactly when I say resting easy. It means more like: are you content right now, are you happy, are you relaxed in your mind. And it don’t quite apply to you, since you can come at it from either direction. That’s one of the reasons I just say ‘resting easy.’ Because it applies to you from whichever direction you’re coming at it from.” Dean gives a little shrug. “You were right, though, Sam. The letters don’t matter. What they mean is sometimes narrow, and don’t really let us… make it as good as it can be. You were right that we shouldn’t do this that way. It’s interesting stuff to know, but it ain’t an entirely workable system. Even in the scene, you got people that don’t quite fit. The only benefit they really give us is that if we get hung up or confused about something, we’ve got someplace to look on the internet for information. I’m glad you didn’t let me tell you; I’m not sure things would’ve gone so smooth.” He’s grinning a little as he says it, but it fades quickly. “Is this messing with you? Are you still resting easy?

 

Sam smiles. “It feels like nothing can hurt me. It feels perfect.”

Dean’s smile is soft. “Anything else you feel you gotta know?”

Sam considers that for few seconds. “I’ll want everything there is to know,” Sam says, and Dean’s smile twists into something wry and knowing. “But it’s not important now. I want to know… and you don’t have to say, Dean, if you don’t want to, but. You said you thought I was the prettiest thing you’d ever seen for years and years.”

The smile fades on Dean’s face, his expression going solemn. “That’s true, Sam,” Dean says quietly. “But why are you asking _now_?”

“I wanted to ask before, but it’s hard to talk to you about feelings, Dean. You don’t like to talk about how you feel, especially when it’s hard things. I’m asking now because I’m so… I feel like I couldn’t feel any better and I couldn’t feel any worse. So if I ask you, but you don’t want to tell me, it’s still okay.” Sam gazes at Dean to see if Dean is understanding him. “So that it won’t hurt me if you can’t talk about it.”

Dean brushes hair away from Sam’s face, his eyes dark green like fir trees, deeply thoughtful. “It’s old news, Sam,” he says slowly. “And when it was going on, it was rough for me. But if you feel like you gotta know, I think I can tell it.”

“I don’t have to know,” Sam says carefully, bringing his hands up to stroke at Dean’s face and neck and shoulders. “I want to know because I want to know if you were ahead of me, on the figuring out you wanted to fuck your brother, and if so, how far ahead of me.”

Dean’s brows arch a little. “This…” he says slowly. “You’re saying wanting me wasn’t anything new, when this all started?”

“Not even close to new,” Sam says, smiling a little.

"Okay." Dean takes a breath and tugs Sam's hair a little, tips his head forward so their foreheads are touching. " But you gotta be quiet and just let me tell it, okay, Sammy? It was rough, it still feels rough sometimes, and you’re right, I don’t want to talk about my feelings. But I’ll tell it to you like a story, if you can just keep your mouth shut a while.”

Dean sounds just a little tense, but nothing that worries Sam overly. He gets it, though. Dean doesn’t want Sam trying to break this down into each and every moment it had taken to live it. “I can keep my mouth shut, Dean,” Sam says. “And you don’t have to. I don’t have to know.”

“But maybe you should, anyway,” Dean says seriously. “So, okay. I’m starting at the beginning, the very beginning. Just try to trust I’m going somewhere with it.” Dean pauses for a long moment, and then starts. “I remember some stuff, from before the fire. I remember blurry stuff, sounds, images, all smeared together in my head, just all in a jumble and out of focus. The first thing I remember, Sam, the very first thing that has time and clear edges, is sitting on the couch next to Dad. Mom was on the floor right there with us, and I was holding you. I don't know how old you were exactly, but I know you was still brand new, and I had seen Mom and Dad holding you, but it was the first time I got to do it. You were so small and pink, Sam. You were wearing little jammies with feet that had dinosaurs on 'em, and you could hardly even hold your head up. I remember Dad telling me you were my baby brother, and I knew that already, but what I didn't know until he actually said that was that you were mine, too. You were Mom's and Dad's little baby, like I was their boy, but you were mine, too, apart from how you were theirs. That you were tiny and I should help take care of you, that that's what big brothers were supposed to do."

"I didn't know that," Sam says, feeling a low, soft swell of love, something sweet and gentle.

"How were you gonna?" Dean asks. "That's why I'm telling you. But what it means, really, is that my life, for me, in my head, started right then. That's what I remember first, and I don't remember everything that happened ever since, but that's when I start remembering stuff in order. and before you start thinking of all of what that means, I'll just tell you, 'cause I already know. It means my whole life is relative to you. I can't remember anything before you, and you have always, always been mine to take care of."

"You keep me safe," Sam whispers.

"Yeah. Yeah, but you gotta shut up. No matter how I say it, I ain't gonna be able to really get across all of what I mean, and maybe you could ask questions and think about it the way you do, and make it all more orderly and shit, but I don't want that. I'm gonna tell you, and you're gonna know, but I'm asking you to let me tell it and then let it alone. I'm mostly at peace with this, Sammy, but I don't wanna look at every second of it. Just whatever comes out has gotta be enough."

Sam doesn't say anything, and after a few seconds, Dean continues, his voice a little lower, a little rougher.

"Your first word was Dean, Sammy. I tucked you in at night, I taught you to pee in the toilet, I kissed your owies, and taught you to read."

Sam had always known all of that. He hadn't known his first word had been Dean, but he isn't surprised, and he actually remembers Dean kissing his owies and teaching him to read. Sam's memories start earlier than Dean's, when Sam was two or so. His first clear memory is of Dean and Sam sitting on the floor tailor style with a big bowl of ice cream between them, Dean taking a bite and then giving Sam a bite, and then bopping Sam gently on the tip of his nose with the spoon, making it sticky, making them both laugh. Sam hasn't thought about it in years.

"All of that, I remember all of that, and it was simple. You were a sweet kid, Sammy, even when you hit your teens, when kids are supposed to be a pain in the ass, you were still a sweetheart mostly. You didn't even start on being a pain in the ass 'til about halfway through sixteen, and we both know why that happened like it did, and it ain't important to this. Just that you were sweet, and even when you weren't, it was never mean-natured, and it was hardly ever pointed at me.

"Then, when you were fifteen, we spent the summer in Wisconsin. There was a lake practically right outside, and the next place over had a dock. You spent the whole summer swimming, and you let your hair grow out for the first time. We both did, a little, 'cause Dad was gone almost the whole time, but I kept mine mostly trimmed up, habit really, and you didn't. You just let it grow. And one day, we both were sitting out on that dock, and you had your feet in the water and kept trying to steal my beer, and I kept trying to catch you at it, just playing, both of us, and I looked over at you, and you were laid out on your back, all stretched out, wearing nothing but cut-off jeans you'd been swimming in, and I thought: Hey, look at that, Sammy's pretty. Just like that. Didn't feel bad about it or nothin', just like I noticed you had a cut on your knee or something. Didn't really think anything about it at all, right then.

"I already knew you were gonna be good looking, you always had been, and you were only an inch or two shy of me, then, and I knew you were gonna be taller. You were just starting to grow into your shoulders, though, were filling out some finally. You were still too skinny, but you were getting some muscle, too, from sparring and swimming and eating your own weight every fucking day. I don't know what it was exactly. I didn't really think on it. Just noticed it all the sudden, and didn't really think it meant anything.

"Then, that same night, I was jerking off just for want of anything better to do, and thinking about all the stuff I usually thought about while I was jerking off, and then I was thinking about you. Just how you looked, brown in the sun, how pretty you looked, smiling and sweet, and it was like I didn't even know I was doing it until after I came, until after. And even then, Sam, I only freaked out a little, I only felt a little bad. I figured it was just 'cause I noticed how pretty you were for the first time, and that I just saw you half-naked, and I didn't even touch you in my head, and it had been awhile since I got laid. I chalked it up to random weird things that happen in your brain sometimes, felt a little bad, ordered a pizza with your favorite stuff on it to make me feel a little better, and ignored it."

Dean falls silent, as though waiting for Sam to yell at him or something.

Sam does nothing of the sort. Sam keeps his mouth shut. Sam remembers that summer. It had been pretty good, weirdly relaxed for them. No motel hopping, no waiting in the car, which was bad, or waiting in the motel room with no idea whether Dad and Dean were hurt or when they'd come back, which was worse. Dad was off doing what was mostly research; or that was what he had told them, at the time, and Sam had believed him. It was before he really started thinking about all the ways Dad was doing it wrong, or how it could be done better. He'd already known, then, that he wasn't like Dad and Dean, but he hadn't been all the way aware. He hadn't thought all the way through it. And he hadn't done a lot of thinking about it that summer, or about much of anything, really. He had spent that summer mostly at rest, researching for information, yes, but not because he had to know right then or someone might get hurt. Reading because he liked to read, he liked to know.

It was a good summer, in Sam's memory, but he also remembers how Dean had been absent a lot. Not so much that Sam worried, and not so much that Sam didn't see him nearly every day, at least for a little bit, but enough that Sam had kind of missed him.

Sam had assumed that Dean had found himself a girl.

And Sam hadn't asked, because then Dean would fill in all the details that Sam didn't want to know, because Sam had already been well aware at that point that he was attracted to his brother.

It was also the first time Dad had left Sam on his own for any length of time. Toward the end of the summer, he had come and got Dean for a hunt, asked Sam if he'd be okay for a couple of weeks, made sure Sam had lots of ammo, and left Sam there alone.

At the time, he hadn't thought much about it. He'd been kind of pleased that Dad was sure enough that he'd be okay to leave him on his own. He'd thought Dad had needed Dean for backup, and Sam was capable of taking care of himself for a little while.

When Dean finally starts to talk again, he sounds a little tense and a little baffled, like after all this time, he still isn't sure what happened. "When I got up the next day, though, it was like you turned into somebody else overnight. That ain't quite right, I know it ain't, but that's how it felt then. Like I still had a little brother named Sammy, but you weren't him. I still felt all the usual things about my little brother, but I could hardly see him in you. All I could see was your long legs and how your hair curled a little around your ears and the way your back looked when you moved and your throat and your belly and your mouth. All I could think was how much I wanted to put my hands on you.

"And even then, I didn't really freak out. I was freaked, yeah, but not bad. Just a little freaked, just 'what the fuck?' freaked. Surprised freaked. I thought it would pass. I thought I _really_ had to go get laid, and yeah, you were definitely pretty as hell, but even though I was suddenly thinking about touching you all over, and even though you somehow didn't even look like my little brother, I knew that you were. I was clear on it, in my head. That this was a fucked up me problem, that it didn't have nothing to do with you really, and I figured it would go away. I knew what I was supposed to feel about you, and seeing how pretty you were just caught me off guard. I'd get used to it, like I got used to it the year you turned ten and quit giving out kisses."

It catches Sam by surprise, even considering the current topic, that Dean knows exactly when Sam had stopped giving kisses. Sam hadn't known. Sam doesn't remember ever deciding consciously to do so. But he does remember it, sort of, just gradually not doing it anymore, having the vague idea that he wasn't supposed to want kisses and cuddles, that those things were only allowed for little kids. It twists in Sam's chest, though in the state he’s in, it’s a gentle kind of twist, a distant ache to know that Dean knows when it had been, and that Dean had never said a word about it, even though Sam knows, just knowing that Dean knows when Sam stopped, that Dean had still wanted kisses, just little kid totally innocent kisses.

"I went out and got laid. I did it that day, in the middle of the afternoon, picked up a girl in the grocery story, talking about apples. Went back to hers, laid her out, did all the things I knew how to do, but. I was thinking of you. I never did that, really. I did it jerking off, thought about stuff, fantasized about stuff, but when I was in the middle of it, all I was thinking of was what I was actually doing. I knew guys did it, thought about other girls or other stuff they wanted to do they thought the girl they was with wouldn't let 'em do, but I never did. Least not after I'd done it enough to know what the hell I was doing. I was always happy with whatever was okay with who I was with, not thinking about who I wished I could be with or things I wished I could be doing. Just never did. That was the first time.

"That was when I started to kinda freak out. I got her off, I made sure she had a good time, but I was freaking out. When it was done, I went right to a bar, used my fake I.D., picked up another chick, and it went just the same way. I came home still smelling like both of 'em, and you were napping on the couch with a book on your belly, and the first thing I thought, Sam, the first thing when I saw you, was that if I touched you a little, just your skin, you would never even know."

Dean's voice is tight and hurt, and Sam is sure that if he spent a few days slowly reeling backward through his memories, he would get to that day, and confirm that that is when Dean had stopped touching Sam. That Dean had been so badly frightened by that impulse that he had declared a cease and desist on touching Sam, and had never done it again unless it was to keep Sam safe, or the very occasional, very brief embrace that Dean had to have to reassure himself of Sam's essential well-being. God.

"That's when I really started to freak out," Dean says. "I went and took a shower and spent about half an hour just freaking the fuck out. But even then, Sam, if it never got any worse than that, just wanting to touch you and thinking about how you looked while I jerked off or fucked a girl, even then, I think I'd have been mostly okay. I think I could have settled it in my head, knowing that it was fucked up, but not having it tear me up inside. If it had been just that, I could know that I was never gonna touch you, ever, and I probably would've got over it, figured out how to be okay with it."

Dean goes quiet. Sam can hear him breathing, a little quick and rough, like Dean is struggling. Even as easy as Sam is right now, knowing that Dean is struggling with it so clearly makes Sam brush his thumb across Dean’s cheekbone and then cradle the back of his neck in one hand. Dean closes his eyes for a few seconds, and when he opens them again, he’s a little calmer. 

"I stayed away from you," Dean says finally. "But I thought about you almost every minute. Not my little brother Sammy, but you and the way you looked, and I started thinking about stuff I knew but just never thought about, like how you smell and the way your hair feels and all kinds of stuff, and that was almost worse, Sammy, that was like I was stealing stuff from my little brother, stuff that could never be sweet and nice again 'cause I was using it wrong. I stayed away, but I couldn't quit it, and I had to stay close enough to keep you safe, I couldn't just fuck off outta there, and I jerked off a fucking ridiculous number of times, telling myself at first I just had to get it outta my system, but knowing it wasn't gonna help, doing it anyway.

"But it was the things I thought about, really. I was okay when it was just how pretty you were, how nice you smelled, I was okay until the first time I thought about what I would actually do if I got to touch you. When I went from thinking of you to doing _to_ you. It wasn't even a bad thing, that first thing, there was no... no... plot to it, it was just random jerking off thinking of you, and then thinking of me jerking you off, and then you jerking me off, just mutual fucking jerkin’ off with no fucking context at all, but after that I didn't try and stop it at all. Like there was a dial for it, Sam, and it had been turned all the way down to nothing your whole life, and then one day I saw you were pretty and it bumped it up a little, and I jerked off thinking of how you looked, and it went up a little more, I fucked a girl thinking of you, I jerked off thinking of your thighs and your mouth and your cock, and it all just nudged it a tiny bit, and then, when I actually touched you in my head, it cranked the dial all the way up and broke it off, so it would never go down again.

"There's a lot of stuff." Dean pauses for a long moment, and Sam hears him struggling. "A lot. A fucking boatload of things, Sam. I ain't gonna go into it, but to tell you that it started out pretty tame and consensual, but it didn't stay that way. I did everything I could think of with you and to you, all of it, in my head.

"I stayed the hell away from you whenever I could. I knew I was fucked up, but I had no idea what to do to fix it, so I just kept outta your way. But when I did see you, I was. I was so _pissed off_ at you, Sammy. I was so pissed, like you were doing somethin', somehow, like you were half-naked from swimming just to fuck with me, like you knew just how to move to make me not be able to stop looking at you, like you were a fucking cocktease _on purpose_. I knew that wasn't true, I knew it, but I believed it anyway, that way you do sometimes, when you know better but you can't fucking help it."

Dean's voice is hurt and squeezed down tight and Sam wants to stop him, tell Dean this is enough, but he recognizes the way these kinds of things work, this act of… confession Dean is committing. There is a momentum to it, and it’s too late to stop it. "Every time I saw you I wanted to push you down and just do it, all of it," he whispers. "And every time I didn't, the next time I wanted to do it even more. Until I just didn't trust myself not to anymore."

Sam's eyes overflow. He stays still and quiet until Dean can go on.

"I called Dad, and I told him the truth, more or less. That I looked over at you one day and saw you were pretty, and I was hung up on it in my head, and I needed to get away from you for a while to figure out how to deal with it. He was just over in Michigan, and he was home the next day."

Sam realizes his mouth is open, and closes it. It's the first thing Dean has said that Sam is actually shocked by.

"We never talked about it. When he came in, you were swimming, and I just told 'im I never touched you, not so much as brushing by you in the hall once I realized, but I was pretty fucking freaked out. That's pretty close to my exact words, actually. And he just said to get my shit together, and we'd head out tomorrow." He pauses for a long moment. "I'm pretty sure he never got how scared I was. That he thought I was freaked out like I was at the beginning, freaked out that it was happening at all. Not freaked out 'cause I was scared I might actually do something to you. And I wasn't gonna tell him that. I could hardly look at that in my own head." He pauses again. "I know you never could talk to Dad, like the two of you didn't have the same language in common, but I could always tell him if I had to. I always knew I could, and I never had to, much. It was enough to know I could, mostly. He never made me tell anything I didn't wanna tell. I knew he wasn't gonna ask. He was just gonna do what I said I needed."

And that hurts. It hurts to know that. The exact reason why Dean can't talk to Sam like that. Because Sam can't leave it alone. What Dean wants to tell was never enough for Sam.

But it's overshadowed, made less, by the understanding that for the last eight years, Dean has been living with the fact that he had had to leave Sam all alone for his own protection. That Dean felt he was so dangerous to Sam that any other possible danger was a necessary risk. Sam doesn't have to wonder about it. He knows.

For Dean, it's the worst crime imaginable, the worst sin possible. For Dean, being a danger to Sam must be like dying.

"We didn't even hunt," Dean says, sounding a little calmer. "He really was just researching. I spent nearly a week drunk and fucking my way through Detroit, then a couple of days wanting to die from the hangover, and he let me alone. After that, I actually spent some time thinking about it. Not what I wanted to do to you, but what I could do to keep fucking living with myself. A way to make it go away was what I wanted, but I was willing to accept anything I thought would just make it bearable to even know. Without you there..." Dean breathes for a few seconds. "Not being close to you didn't help it. I still thought of you, always, and wanted you, always, but at least I couldn't hurt you in Detroit. And there was some comfort in that, enough to let me think a little, and I always knew, the whole time I was doing it, I knew it was fucked up, I was hating myself the whole time, Sam, sick with it. But from far away, you were safe, and I could remember a little that I never touched you. And I could think enough to understand that I had to be sure it would always be that way, that I could never hurt you, or I couldn't be with you. Ever.

"I walked around a lot, thinkin', too restless to sit still and do it, trying and trying to make it so I could go home. For a while, I thought maybe I couldn't. I thought I was gonna have to find a hunt and get myself killed."

It's the way he says it. Not that Sam is surprised that Dean would think something like that, but how he says it, like it's the obvious solution, the only possible solution. If he had said it any other way, Sam might have been able to keep himself under control. He wants to scream at Dean, hit him, Sam is furious and terrified and grief-stricken for Dean, for Dean ever feeling like that, but he's still conscious of the fact that this is at least as hard for Dean to tell as it is for Sam to hear, almost certainly harder, so he doesn't yell or hit. Dean asked him to be quiet and listen, so Sam bites down on his tongue and cries silently, hard, horrible crying, grief and pain, awful, helpless seizures of hurt, his whole body shuddering with it, but silently.

"Sweetheart," Dean says helplessly. "Sweetheart."

It passes after a while. Sam clutches at Dean a little, helplessly, when Dean leans up, but Dean just reaches over and around Sam, doesn't try to move away. He gives Sam a wet wipe.

Sam wipes his face and blows his nose.

"I ain't sure where I was," Dean says, as though there hadn't been a pause. "I was just wandering, couldn't get back there if I tried, most likely. It was the middle of the night, but I don't know what time. I passed a girl, and I kept going a ways, and she called me back, just said, 'Hey, wait,' and I turned around and she asked me if I was okay. I said I was fine, and she gave me this look like, sure, okay, and I realized she was a hooker. She wasn't cruising me, though, she was just really checking if I was okay. When I really looked, I could see, not a lot of 'em, but a few. And I thought, why the hell not? So I asked if she was busy, and she asked what I had in mind, and I told her I just wanted to talk. She didn't buy it, but I figured she heard it a lot, so I was okay with it. I didn't ask her how much or anything. It didn't go like I thought it would in my head, having never done it before. She just said, come on, and we went back to her place.

"When we got there, I gave her all the cash I had in my wallet, let her see me doing it, so she'd know it was all I had. I think that's what made her think I really wanted to talk, and she got us some beers and I told her everything there was to know about it."

Bizarrely, this makes perfect sense to Sam. So much sense that he's surprised he never thought of doing it himself.

"I dunno, maybe all hookers got a lot of common sense and I just don't know it, but she was smart, Sam. She didn't ask a lot of questions or anything, but when she did ask stuff, it was good stuff, it was stuff I could use." He pauses for a few seconds, his hand tightening a little in Sam's hair. "I don't know how to tell this part of it and make sense. It was complicated. I ended up there for more than a day. When I left, I gave her the credit cards in my wallet, and all the pin numbers, and made sure she knew to get what she could as quick as she could, and she never asked me a single question about that part." He pauses again. "She was the first person to tell me that what I thought in my own head was all okay. That it was only what I did that counted, not what I thought about. That wasn't all she said, and that wasn't exactly how she said it, but she made me be able to see it, believe it a little. Other stuff, too. She was the one that told me that people who know what lives inside their heads ain't dangerous, that when she was deciding whether or not to take a guy's money, a big part of it for her was thinking if the guy might be dangerous, and that if a guy knew what he really wanted, she was pretty safe. It was guys that didn't know what it was they wanted, or couldn't say it, couldn't look at it, that she was careful of.

"And we did have sex. A buncha sex. Most of it stuff I never did or wanted before, but stuff I wanted to do to you. I didn't know it, but now I think she was making those things okay for me the only way she knew how. Making 'em less about something I thought of as awful, and making 'em just sex instead. She helped me. I can't even say how, not exactly, just that she did. Part of it was probably just being able to say it, and her not looking at me like she thought I was evil for having it in my head. She just helped me, and I went away knowing it. That. That I might be okay, I might be able to figure out a way to be okay, and if I could, it was because she helped me. I still think about her."

Sam would like to fucking kiss her.

"It didn't make it go away," Dean says slowly. "Like, like Jess didn't make you right, Sammy, she didn't make me right. But she pointed me in the direction of the first road sign for it. I spent a long time thinking about things she said, and I spent a while picking up girls in bars and asking 'em for kinky sex stuff, like I knew in the back of my head all along that part of what I needed was to have a way to look at some of it that was apart from you. This is like. Hindsight, though. I was just trying to figure it out, then. But maybe the important part is that she told me, she said out loud, that if you were her baby brother, she would trust me not to hurt you. That she was sure I would never hurt you, that she would bet anything on it. And I could see on her face that she meant it. It wasn't even that I believed her, exactly. I believed that _she_ believed it, and that was like. I needed that. I needed somebody who wasn't me to trust me with you."

And Sam understands that exactly. Dean has done that for Sam, has said the things Sam needed to hear in order to make himself believe. Sam is pretty sure he's done it for Dean, too. Sometimes someone else’s faith in you is essential to your own.

"I thought about that, some, took a couple of day jobs, did a little construction work, just stuff to keep me busy and let me think. I settled it as well as I could, but I still wasn't sure of much of anything. Then one day Dad asked if I was about ready to go get you, and I saw that Dad was already sure of me. Always had been, never doubted me. Dad trusted me like you did, Sammy. Absolutely, and without question, just like I trusted him, just like I trust you. And that was enough. It didn't make it gone, but it was enough that I was sure, 'cause Dad would die before he let you get hurt, and if he ever really thought I could hurt you, he'd make sure I never fucking saw you again.

"So we came home. And you were still beautiful, Sam, and I still wanted you, and all the stuff in my head was still there, but it was like just making myself look at it, think about it, made it so I could see you again. My little brother. I got that that stuff couldn't hurt you unless I let it. I never did figure out how to set it all the way apart from you; maybe it ain't possible. But I got to where I could be around you and be your brother and live with what I wanted in my head. It took a long time. Telling it sounds short, but it was a long time, Sam. I ain't sure I made it all the way through it by the time you left us, but by that time it was well enough handled that I was worrying more about you and Dad killing each other than I was that."

Before he left them. It shouldn't hurt Sam to hear it. He's known for awhile, maybe even always, that Dean felt that way about it. It still hurts, though.

Sam would like to say something that could in some way relay that he knows the lengths to which Dean has gone to make Sam safe and happy. That he recognizes that Dean had devoted his whole life to it, had gone so far as to let Sam go away, leave Dean, so Sam could be safe and happy.

He can't, of course. Dean is never going to think he's done enough, and won't believe Sam even if he tries. And Sam is very clear on what this revelation means in terms of Dean's needs. The pain, too, probably, but definitely the penance. Sam knows where that imaginary line had been, the point at which Dean began feeling that all the bad things, all the hurtful things that have ever happened to Sam became Dean's fault, Dean's responsibility. This is where. This is what Dean has been paying for, the thing for which Dean needs absolution again and again and again.

He has to leave that alone, all of it. He has to never mention it for the rest of their lives unless Dean starts that conversation, and he never will. It hurts Dean too much. He doesn't even want forgiveness for it, feels like he can never pay enough, but he lives with it and does what he can to get relief from it when he needs it. Sam even gets that it will be better for Dean, it will work better for him, that it's Sam hurting him, punishing him. Sam doesn't like it, but he understands it, and he can accept it.

What he can do is lean in and kiss Dean, so he does, brushes their lips together gently. Dean's hand tightens in his hair for a moment, then relaxes, and he kisses Sam back.

“So that had to basically kill all your rest,” Dean says quietly.

“Not all of it,” Sam says. “And I’m glad you told me. And now I need to know if you want to hear mine.” Dean’s expression crumples a little, and Sam presses his hand against the back of Dean’s neck. “It’s nothing like that, I swear, Dean. In a lot of ways, it was the opposite.”

Dean regards him for several long seconds, but there is a little interest kindling in his eyes. “It doesn’t hurt you?” Dean asks.

Sam tucks an arm under his head and considers the question. "Not like that. Not like it hurt you," he says finally. "The situations really aren't parallel, Dean. I'll tell you the whole thing, and there was definitely some adolescent angst, but I never felt bad about wanting you. There wasn't even that much angst, because I knew since I was eight or so that I couldn't ever have you. I live in my head. I understand the intangibles of the way the rules are designed to make people conform, behave a certain way that's perceived as being right. When I was six, we were definitely getting married, because that's what you did with the person you loved the most: you married them. And when I was seven, I was given to understand that boys weren't allowed to marry other boys, so we were going to have to live in sin. I was totally okay with that. I had no idea what it meant, of course, but I was okay with that because you were going to be there with me, and that was what mattered."

Dean barks out a surprised laugh, and Sam grins at him.

"And when I was eight, I understood that we were brothers, and that's why we could neither get married nor live in sin, but it was still special and good and ours, and I was okay with that. It was before I had hormones to really contend with, granted, but I knew when it happened that it wasn't an option, had known for years, so it didn't hurt me quite like that. So. Whatever you want to know, you can ask, or I can just tell you the whole thing. Or I could tell you the five sentence condensed version, if you want. Or you don't have to know at all. I'm okay with any of those options, and you don't have to take me up on it right now. You can decide to ask later, if you want."

Dean looks down at him thoughtfully. "Gimme the condensed version," he says after a while, sounding like he's not quite willing to hear it at all, but can't really help himself either.

"At thirteen, I found your stash of porn," Sam says, and enjoys the expression on Dean's face that seems both scandalized and proud, and absolutely hilarious, "so I was all set for jerking off for a good long while and clear on liking girls, but a little unclear on how I felt about guys; some of what you had was explicit enough that I was clear that there was definitely _something_ I liked about guys, but I wasn't clear on what it was. I researched it, because that was what I knew how to do." Dean's eyebrows climb halfway up his forehead, but he doesn't actually ask. "So at the tail end of thirteen, I was pretty confident that I was bisexual, pretty comfortable with it because bigotry isn't really in my nature, and was spending a lot of time thinking about how to get a person of either gender to give me kisses and maybe let me touch them inappropriately. On my fourteenth birthday, you caught me out around the back of the house while I was actually getting to kiss and inappropriately touch Mike Monahan, and you said, 'Jeez, Sam, this is why your bedroom door's got a lock!' That was kind of a mood killer with Mike, which sucked for me because all the inappropriate touching wasn't really that inappropriate yet, but it was also kind of a revelation. I knew you liked girls, but just what you said, just the way you said it, made it clear that you didn't have a problem with me liking boys. I never really thought you would, but the affirmation might as well have been an invitation. I was fourteen, so I was actually thinking inappropriate thoughts about you about a year before you ever had them about me. I thought about it for a while, that you didn't care, that you didn't even act surprised, that you didn't treat me any differently than you had before, and it was pretty much inevitable after that. You were who I thought of, and I've got my own stash of things I did with you and to you, and not all of them are all that nice, either. But the thing is, Dean, the important thing, is that it didn't change anything about how I felt about you. It didn't surprise me. It never felt bad or wrong to me. If you're fourteen and comfortably bisexual and your older brother is Dean Winchester, wanting to rub yourself all over your big brother is just _common sense_." Dean snorts; he isn't quite smiling, but his whole face looks lighter, brighter. "It didn't change anything about how I felt about you. Since I can remember, Dean, I have always wanted you, and the only way that changed was that as I got older, I wanted new things I just didn't know about before. I exchanged things, like wanting to ride bikes with you for wanting to make out with you, but it didn't change anything fundamental. I feel exactly the same way about you _right now_ as I have felt about you my whole life."

"You know that's fucked up, right?" Dean says, but gently, and he's looking soft and relieved and happy down at Sam. Then he smirks and adds, "And that was way more than five sentences."

"It's not fucked up," Sam says, and rolls over to hook his knee over Dean's thigh. "It's just how it was. Don't forget, _my_ whole life is relative to you, too."

Dean tips his head a little. "Did you wonder if I'd let you?" he asks, and Sam can hear the way it drags out of Dean's throat, like Dean would stop it if he could, and how it's not quite the question he wants the answer to, but it's the closest he can come to it.

"At fourteen, I _knew_ you would," Sam says truthfully. "I knew how to make it happen. You're right, I was terrifyingly precocious, and I knew three surefire ways, and at least four or five others that would probably work. At fourteen, I was still sure of where I lived on your personal food chain, Dean. I was at the top. I knew it. Later that wasn't always true, but at fourteen I was sure."

Dean looks a little sad, so Sam kisses him until Dean relaxes, slides a hand into Sam's hair where Sam is sure Dean's hand is going to take up semi-regular habitation for awhile. He thinks it's because it was the first thing, for Dean, Sam's hair grown out and curling around his ears, the first thing, and the thing that was mostly innocent. Sam is fine with it, whatever the reason.

Dean doesn't actually ask why Sam hadn't tried, but Sam answers anyway. "But at fourteen, I already knew how to think almost like I think now. Not exactly, but I understood causality and consequence pretty thoroughly, and I knew you. I understood you. I knew I could do it, and I even knew that I was arguably more capable of making that decision with clarity at fourteen than you were at eighteen. That's part of why I didn't. You would have done it for a lot of reasons, but the only card I would have had to play to get it was that I needed you to help me so I didn't go out blundering around looking for gay sex on my own. I might get hurt. It would have been easy." Dean gives Sam a look that is almost blind with terror, and then closes his eyes, but he doesn't deny it. "But I understood causality and consequence, and I knew you, and I knew I was still a little boy to you, and it would make you feel bad. I could see all the reasons how it would feel wrong to you, and I understood them academically in detail, but what mattered in my heart was that I knew it would hurt you, and it would be wrong to do that to you. That just because I could do it, didn't mean that I should. I won't say I was never tempted, but I was never tempted enough to lose sight of the fact that it would hurt you like that."

"And you didn't know I--" Dean says, clearly having no intention of finishing that sentence in any way.

"No," Sam says. "No, and I think that's probably the thing that we should both really be grateful for. I didn't see it. I didn't have a clue. But if I had, if I had seen it... I was smart, I knew all the reasons why not, but if I had seen you look at me like that, I don't think I could have made any kind of rational decision about it. I think I would have acted just like any fifteen year old, impulsive and thoughtless and selfish, and I'd have been all over you. I'd like to believe if I had any time at all to think about it, even just a day to process it and make myself focus on why I hadn't been doing you the whole time, I wouldn't have. But I'm not even close to sure of it. I could handle my want. I could think it into something I could manage. Your want, though, on top of mine, would have probably been more than I could think around. Wanting something you know you can't have is totally different than wanting something you could have, but shouldn't. I would have crawled into your lap naked and you would have dumped me on my ass on the floor, but even that much would have made you feel like you had molested me for the rest of your life. So, yeah. Thank God you didn't know, and I didn't know."

“No fucking shit,” Dean says a little breathlessly.

“Although you have to admit, it’s a least a little funny that we ended up here anyway,” Sam says, and watches the corner of Dean’s mouth quirk up.

“Maybe, but I’m glad it was now and not then. Our whole family was already so fucked up; it didn’t need any further fucking by two hormonal teenagers.” Dean’s hand flexes in Sam’s hair, which feels so great that Sam presses up into it. “So, you got any other burning questions, or should we get something to eat?” Dean asks.

“No more burning questions,” Sam says, and rolls over to splay out on his back. “Honestly, I kind of want to just lay here and think about how sore I am.”

Dean smirks a little. “That good for you? Feeling like you been well fucked?”

“Yes,” Sam says, and then shakes his head a little. “No, not quite. It’s been good to feel like that in the past, but that isn’t what this was, exactly. This is feeling like I’ve been well _used_.”

Dean’s breath catches a little, and he tugs at Sam’s hair again. “Wasn’t sure you’d want to hear it said like that,” he admits.

“I’m more okay with it since that first time I sucked you off,” Sam says honestly. “I didn’t know what was happening, exactly, but I knew I wanted to do it however you wanted it, and it didn’t take me long after that to realize that some of it was the way it felt, like you were using me to get what you wanted. I even knew it wasn’t just that; that you were making sure we both got what we wanted, but, yeah. I wanted that, then, and I like the way it feels right now.” Dean is smiling faintly and also, for some reason, flushing just a little, just at the tops of his cheeks. “But I could murder a steak right now,” Sam adds.

Dean’s smile widens into a grin. “You shoulda thought of that when you grocery shopped,” he says. “You can have a sandwich, turkey or ham, or you can have an omelet.”

“Omelet,” Sam says firmly. “Lots of veggies.”


	31. 31

Dean grumbles a little, but he sets about making naked omelets, and Sam watches him, feeling still and calm again, not quite as much as right afterward -- some of Dean’s pain had bled away a part of it, but Sam doesn’t regret it -- but still feeling almost dishrag limp, relaxed physically, but more significantly, relaxed mentally. He doesn’t really think at all, just watches Dean cook, admiring the lines of his body, feeling like he understands that the point of this kind of sex is to reach that breaking place in his head, but reaching that place is what leads to this, and this is as important as that kind of shattering feeling.

He eats what Dean brings him, full of green peppers and onions and mushrooms, and notes the fact that Dean’s is loaded with ham and cheese, and afterward feels a little like he might be able to drowse, and a lot like he needs to take a shower. Dean takes their plates, and says, “Why don’t you get into the shower, Sam. I’ll change the sheets. God knows they need it.”

Sam doesn’t really even hesitate. He’s still resting, and he’s still in the mindset of the last couple of days, where doing what Dean says has been all that has been keeping him from losing it. Dean joins him a few minutes later, and doesn’t even offer up a token resistance when Sam scrubs him with the soapy washcloth, even when Sam has finished cleaning him up, and is just basically toying with Dean’s cock with the soap, which becomes mostly hard again at the attention.

“It’s gonna be a little while, Sammy,” Dean says, amused, but he doesn’t try to stop Sam from touching him, which is what Sam cares about.

They eventually get out, sharing the one sadly beleaguered towel between them, and Sam climbs directly back into bed, though he doesn’t lay down right away. He examines the restraint system Dean had put together instead, interested now that he feels like he could let Dean tie him down without any kind of resistance.

“It’s mountain climbing gear,” Dean says, watching from where he’s standing at the side of the bed, drinking a beer. “Parts of it, anyway.”

“Why?” Sam asks, mystified.

“Partly because this bed isn’t set up for any kind of really serious bondage, and I wanted to make sure that you were as restrained as I could make you,” Dean says. “And partly because I can pack this up and it comes in pieces, Sam. It’s versatile. It comes in pieces that I can use just parts of, and it’s lightweight, easy to transport, and doesn’t look obviously like an S&M shop exploded in the trunk of the Impala.”

Sam snorts. “You said we could take this rig on the road, though,” he says.

“We can’t take it set up the way it is; we can’t use it setup like this on the road. We’d have to be somewhere safe. We can’t use the whole rig, is what I meant. But we can take it, and we can use some of it. And I got some other things, more traditional bondage gear, because I thought you might like some of it. Although I’m pretty sure that’s not gonna matter that much to you. The idea of chains and leather isn’t what necessarily does it for you. It’s the actual restraint, no matter how that happens. Still, you might like some of it.” Dean shrugs one shoulder. “We’ll find out for sure later. But tell me what you think about the body harness?”

Sam looks down at himself, and realizes that he hadn’t actually thought about the body harness all that much except when it was being used against him. It had retreated so far into ‘normal’ in his consciousness that he hadn’t even thought about not showering in it. The wet leather is actually familiar at this point. What does he think about it?

“I like it,” he says finally. “But it’s more or less what you said. I like the… convenience of it, really. It doesn’t get my motor running just because of how it looks or feels, really. Just when it’s doing it’s job. But the collar.” Sam pauses. “The collar is something else entirely. I see how it fits with regular bondage stuff and the harness, but it doesn’t equate in my head.”

“No, I knew that,” Dean agrees. “It means something to you other than that. It means you don’t want to choose.”

“Exactly!” Sam says. “It’s exactly that! It’s like a marker in my head. It means sex in a certain kind of way, whereas the bondage… it isn’t even really about sex. It is, and I love it in conjunction with sex, but it’s entirely it’s own thing, really.” Sam gives Dean an admiring look. “I feel like I should be thanking whoever taught you this stuff at the same time that I’d kind of like to choke her out.”

Dean smiles a little. “It’s not what you think, though,” he says. 

“What do I think?” Sam asks, genuinely curious to know if Dean actually knows what Sam thinks.

“You think I was serious about her, that I learned all this and did all this to keep her happy,” Dean says, and yes, that’s what Sam has been assuming. “But it was more like the buddy system.” Sam blinks. “She was a good friend I had sex with whenever I could, and she needed this, and… it was something I needed, too, though I couldn’t have told you why if you’d asked me. So anyway, we did this together to have someone we could trust to back us up in case we got in over our heads, but we weren’t serious. Not like that.”

“How long…” Sam starts, and then stalls out, not sure what kind of question will get him the information he actually wants.

“I was just about useless when you went to Stanford,” Dean says, but his eyes are quiet; he doesn’t seem worried. “I fumbled through the motions for a couple of months, and Dad basically told me to take some time to get it together and come back when I was ready to hunt.”

Sam narrows his eyes, feeling a spike of anger, but Dean waves a hand at him.

“He was right. I was checked out, you know? In my head, I was not there enough to do the job. And it wasn’t just me. Dad went and stayed with Bobby for almost four months, took maybe two hunts. Whether we wanted to admit it or not, you being not there messed with both of us; I’m not blaming you, I’m just saying that things without you were as fucked up as they had been while you was with us.” He sits down on the edge of the bed and tugs at one of the loose leather straps dangling off Sam’s harness. “I went to see a girl I’d had some amazing sex with for about a week while Dad and I were hunting in SoCal. Mostly because I had nothing better to do, a little because it wasn’t that far from you. We had some amazing sex again, a lot of it on the kinky side, but we only knew how to do so much, and she wanted stuff I didn’t know how to do. When she suggested we find people in the scene and see if they’d teach us, I thought at first that I’d pass. All those strangers, and you know how paranoid Winchesters are. But then I started thinking about it kind of at odd moments, when I wasn’t doing much other thinking, and the idea grew on me. So we found some places in the area on the internet, tried a couple, found one with some people we liked, and we did that for a while. Some of it was great. Some of it didn’t interest me much. And she needed it a lot more than I did, so even if I hated it, I was gonna hang around just to make sure she was okay. But I didn’t hate it, and some of it was actually excellent. I stuck around until she hooked up with someone for something more serious, which was about five months.” Dean gives Sam a little grin. “I was told by more than one person that I’d be missed.” He waggles his eyebrows.

Sam grins, and doesn’t try to pretend the information doesn’t change his whole perspective on how Dean had learned to do this. He hadn’t exactly been insane over it before, or at least his moments of possessiveness were fairly infrequent, but it’s good to feel that little knot of jealousy unravel in his mind. “Then maybe I owe her a thank you note,” Sam says.

Dean smirks. “I think you probably owe her a least a fruit basket. Maybe a cookie bouquet. Every time I see an ad for one online, I want to order one. Giant cookies on sticks, is all I’m sayin’. Too bad we don’t have an actual address.”

“You can get them in stores in some cities,” Sam says. “I’ll start checking when we get back on the road.”

Dean grins, easily pleased.

“Speaking of getting back on the road,” Sam segues fairly clumsily, but needs must. “How long until we do that?”

“Are you getting cabin fever?” Dean asks a little too casually.

“No. I feel like I could probably manage to stay in this room having sex with you to the exclusion of everything else for at least a year,” Sam says, and actually mostly means it. Dean’s smile is momentarily bright and a little heartbreaking at once.

“Then I figure we got a couple of days to try most anything we want without worrying about how much danger we’re willing to put ourselves in to get what we need outta this.” Dean leans in a little further and kisses Sam, slow and wet and hot, apparently just because Dean wants to. “So do you want to make a list or something?” he asks, after he breaks away.

Sam actually considers that, but shakes his head. “There are a couple of things I want specifically, but mostly what you’ve been doing has been working really well for me,” he says honestly.

Dean looks pleased. “Like what things?”

“I want to fuck you in the very near future,” Sam says, and gets to see Dean’s eyes darken with desire. “And I want you to pierce my nipples.” Dean’s eyes widen at that, and a muscle clenches in his jaw. “You said I was too stoned on sex to make the decision before, right?”

“Yeah,” Dean says, eyes narrowing a little on Sam. “That’s what I said.”

“Am I too stoned on sex to make it now?” Sam asks. He will accept either answer, because while he is thinking clearly, he is still resting fairly easy as well, and he’ll understand if Dean doesn’t want Sam in anything but top cognitive function before he makes this decision.

“No,” Dean says slowly. “But I wanna wait anyway.” Sam frowns and opens his mouth, but Dean just shakes his head. “I want to let the play piercings heal, first, Sam. Give ‘em a week to heal up, and I’ll do it any time you want.” He pauses. “I know what you said you thought I wanted, but you didn’t quite get it right. We could do the barbells, if that’s what _you_ want, but that’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

Sam is intrigued. “What did you have in mind?”

“I want to double pierce you,” Dean says. He brackets one of Sam’s nipples with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. “A barbell, here,” he says, running a finger lightly across Sam’s nipple from top to bottom. “Then rings.” He runs a finger across the same nipple from side to side. “I can attach a chain from the rings,” he murmurs, low and warm. “Or weights, if you’re willing to give that a try. But that’s not really what it’s about. It’s just the way I want it to look. Wouldn’t work on me; I’ve got too little flesh for it, but you’ve got enough.”

Sam’s mouth is dry and his cock, already mostly hard just from talking about sex, hardens completely. He can sort of imagine what it will look like -- he will google image the shit out of it as soon as he gets access to some wi-fi -- but it’s more about the way _Dean_ looks. Like he’s lost in some deep fantasy he’s never really considered the possibility of fulfilling.

Dean looks up at him. “The barbells I’ve got have triangular ends,” he says. “They’re not sharp, but they’ll still jab at you if you move wrong. Just to remind you that they’re there. You gonna let me do that to you, Sammy?”

“Absolutely,” Sam breathes, and Dean’s smile is slow and hot.

“Give it a week to heal up,” he says. “And they’re going to hurt like an absolute bastard for a few weeks until they heal, you know that, right?”

“I hunt monsters for a living,” Sam says. “Once a wendigo sliced my back open like it was going for my spine. I think I can handle it.”

Dean smirks a little. “You got a point. Still. I don’t want you sayin’ I didn’t warn you.”

“I am duly warned,” Sam agrees. 

Dean gives him a brief, look, sharp and full of wanting at the same time, but he just nods. “What else?” he asks, expression genuinely inquisitive.

Sam feels his face grow hot and his eyes want to cut away from Dean’s forthright regard, but he makes himself be still. “The cage,” he says finally, and Dean’s brows arch briefly before his face struggles through surprise and into want, and then into something almost like need.

“You don’t have to do that yet, Sam,” Dean says, but his voice is gruff. It’s gruff, but it’s _sincere_ , too, and Sam’s chest clenches a little at it. “You can take your time thinking about when you want to do that.”

Sam nods slowly, then shakes his head. “Until I’ve actually done it, I’m going to be on the ledge,” he tries to explain. “Not sure one way or the other if I want it. Better to do it so I know, and better to do it _here_ , where we’re safe. And.” Sam’s blush deepens. “And I want to give it up to you just because you want it as much as you do.”

Dean smiles, a little sympathy mixed with gratitude and avarice eddying through his eyes. “I’m never going to say no,” he says simply. “Any time you let me, I’m never going to say no.”

Sam nods. He had more or less already known that.

“That’s all?” Dean asks, his impatience so faint it might be Sam’s imagination. (Sam doesn’t think it is, but Dean has exercised so much patience over the last several weeks of his life that Sam isn’t inclined to be annoyed over it.)

“A hundred other things,” Sam admits ruefully, and Dean echoes that rueful smile back at him. “But first, I want to hit you.” He pauses, but Dean doesn’t ask any questions, just gives him a thoughtful look. “I want to do it for… for fun, for recreation. I want to see it when it isn’t punishment or penance, but just because you like it, and I want to watch you liking it.” Sam isn’t sure he’s explaining himself well, but Dean seems perfectly at ease with it, eyes a little bright.

“You want to know if we both still like it when it’s about getting off, and nothin’ deeper or more needful,” Dean says, and his lips quirk. Sam nods, face still feeling hot, and Dean get’s up and circles around the head of the bed to the table Sam still hasn’t seen. He comes back with a short whip of some kind, something with a long handle, but at least a dozen strips of leather dangling from it. Some of them are just leather straps, but a few of them are braided into denser strands and knotted at the bottom, and a couple of them, two or three, have what look like strands of some kind of silvery wire braided into them. “This is one of the things I got just for me,” Dean says, and runs the strands of dangling leather through his closed fist, almost stroking them. His cock has risen to half mast, which Sam thinks is pretty impressive considering how recently and how hard they’d both just gotten off. He shifts a little and watches Dean fondling the multi-tailed whip, interested in Dean’s expression, which is a little soft and a little hungry at the same time. He feels his own cock twitching a little, also impressively quickly ready (he wonders if their recovery speeds will slow down a little once everything isn’t quite so new), responding to the look on Dean’s face. “It’s a flogger, and not a very hard one.” He glances up, catching Sam’s eyes. “I might want something harder, later, but this is still all new to you, and you gotta learn how to use these things to get it right, so I didn’t pick up anything really serious.”

“Can I see it?” Sam asks, and Dean closes the distance and reverses his grip on the flogger, holding it out to Sam handle first. Sam takes the leather wrapped handle, feeling the weight of the dangling strands and flexes his hand around it thoughtfully. “How hard is it to control?” he asks, because there are enough strands that Sam thinks they’ll spread on contact, and he isn’t sure about using something on Dean that he can’t aim.

“Not hard,” Dean says, his gaze fixed on the flogger in Sam’s hands, like he can’t quite bring himself to look away. “There isn’t much chance of you going too far with a flogger this soft. There are only a few braided strands, which are the ones that really bite; the rest are soft leather. They’ll sting, but you’d have to really work to break the skin with them. This is a pretty easy tool, Sammy, not something you need a lot of finesse to work with. It’ll spread out from the impact site, but not too far, and not too hard.”

Sam considers that for a few seconds. “Did you buy anything else for me to hit you with?” he asks finally, mostly just curious.

Dean shifts a little, his cock filling a little more as Sam watches. “Yeah. A riding crop. It’s a more precise tool, but it’s got more wallop to it, too. I think you’ll want some practice with this before you try the crop.” He pauses for a long moment, and then, almost like he doesn’t want to, adds, “You can cut somebody up with a crop if you aren’t careful. It’s a harder tool.”

Sam gives himself another handful of seconds to think about how he feels about that, and then asks, “Do you… is that something you want? To be cut up with it?”

Dean’s eyes dart up to meet Sam’s for a moment, and then shift away. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I’ve seen it done, but never had it done to me. Never trusted anybody that much.” He glances at Sam’s eyes again, and lets his gaze stay this time. “It’s something I’ve thought about,” he admits.

Sam nods a little. “I think I can do it,” he says honestly. His cock, at least, thinks he can, and he’s a little surprised by it, but not as surprised as he would have been only a day or two ago. Dean looks startled, eyes going briefly wide, and then eddying dark and full of want. “I’d need some practice, and the first time we tried for blood I’d want to be someplace really safe, just to give you time to heal, but the idea doesn’t scare me.” He’s almost surprised that it’s true. He doesn’t exactly want to make Dean bleed, but he can almost imagine Dean’s response to it, the way Dean goes so soft and pliant under the pain, and that’s something he knows he likes and wants. And considering all the things that Sam wants, a little blood-letting for Dean’s sake seems almost fair. His only concern is getting the degree right, and Dean has already equipped him with a tool for practice. 

Dean has thought of almost everything, this whole time. Dean has always been just enough ahead of what they’re actually doing to guide things so they go just the right way. Given a little time, Sam probably won’t need that guidance, but he’s confident that Dean will continue to be able to give it as long as Sam does.

Dean licks his lips. “You got any kind of order you want to do this stuff in, Sam?” he asks, his gaze flicking to the flogger in Sam’s hands again.

Sam doesn’t smile at Dean’s transparency, though he kind of wants to. Dean has worked awfully hard the last few days to give Sam everything he needs, and while Sam is sure Dean had gotten plenty out of it, too, isn’t feeling cheated, there is still this one thing, Dean’s pain kink, that they haven’t touched at all. Dean would probably be willing to go as long as it took without it, but there’s no reason to deny him. Sam is feeling good, relaxed and easy in his mind, and having Dean hurting for him has been good for him every time. Dean had been extremely careful to make sure it had gone that way.

Dean had been so careful, through all of this. Sam feels a little guilty about feeling surprised that Dean’s control is that good.

“I’d like to hurt you and fuck you,” Sam says. “Then maybe take a break before we do anything with the cage.”

Dean’s expression softens a little. “It freaks you out that bad, really, Sammy?”

“It does, but…” Sam shifts and leans back against the headboard, absently pulling the leather of the flogger through one hand, toying with it. “It does, but it also… I also am… fascinated at the idea. That’s not the right word.” He shakes his head. “There isn’t a right word for how I feel about it.”

Dean nods as though he understands. “I don’t want you doin’ anything you don’t want.”

“I know. But. I do want, in a kind of terrified way, and, Dean, you want it enough to make me want it just for that,” Sam says gently. “The way you looked at me when I had it on, when you asked me if we could keep it… I want _that_ , even if I’m less sure of how I feel about the cage.”

Dean smiles a little. “I appreciate that, Sammy, and I already knew you was gonna be generous like that, but you got to promise me that if it goes bad for you, you’ll let me know it.”

“I will,” Sam says firmly. “All of this… I know it’s got to be good for both of us to work.” Dean nods, looking a little relieved, as if he hadn’t been sure Sam had understood that. Sam thinks for a long moment, pondering what Dean likes and what he’s said he’s willing to do, not quite sure what he’s thinking will be something Dean will like, but then decides there’s no way to be sure without asking, and there’s no better time to ask than now. “You said if I wanted to tie you up a little, you’d be okay with that?” he half-asks finally.

Dean’s eyes glitter. “You want to tie me down and hit me?” he asks.

Sam licks his lips. “Yeah. And fuck you. The idea of having you… at my mercy like that…”

Dean blinks a little, and then huffs out a little breath, like he’s surprised and something else. Sam isn’t sure what. He watches Dean as Dean watches the flogger in Sam’s hands for a few brief seconds, and then Dean is nodding. “I ain’t been tied down in a long time, Sammy,” he says quietly. “And even then, only a couple of times. It’s a trust thing that I didn’t have with most people. But I can let you do that.”

“But will you like it?” Sam wants to know.

Dean’s eyes are dark. “I ain’t completely sure. I like the _idea_ of it.” He actually flushes a little as he says it, and Sam is charmed. “Or of you doing it, anyway. A little like the cage, I guess. I like the idea that you’d like it, even if I don’t know for sure if it’s gonna work for me.”

“I just want your wrists in the cuffs,” Sam says, and shifts so that he’s kneeling in the middle of the bed, gesturing at the cuffs attached to either end of the headboard. “With you kneeling on the bed. So that I have your whole back and ass… all spread out. On display.”

Dean shivers, and Sam’s cock throbs a little to see it. “Yeah,” Dean says a little hoarsely. “I… I think that’s okay.”

Sam sees that the shaft of Dean’s cock is a little slick with precome, which he thinks is a pretty decent way to judge what Dean is really feeling. The sight makes his own cock jerk a little, and he knee walks over to the edge of the bed and slides off the edge.

Dean watches him, eyes very green, but doesn’t actually say anything. He climbs onto the bed, throws a look at Sam over his shoulder, and then stretches his arms out along the top of headboard, leaving his wrists close to the cuffs. Sam sits the flogger on the edge of the bed beside Dean’s knee and works the cuff open, wrapping it around Dean’s wrist, and then snapping it closed. Dean’s hand clenches into a fist for a moment, and then relaxes. Sam circles around to the other side of the bed and does the same to Dean’s other wrist. Dean shifts on his knees, flexing his arms a little, pulling at the cuffs as though just to test the feel of them, and then wraps his fingers around the top rail of the headboard and backs up a little on the bed, so that he’s stretched out, back a long, muscled expanse, ass taut and gorgeous, his body pulled into an inviting line. He’s got his knees spread a little, presumably for balance, and for a moment he just sits there, face tipped down toward the mattress. He’s taking long, deep breaths. His cock is thick and twitching a little between his thighs. There is already a small damp patch beneath him on the sheets.

“I think,” he says a little roughly. “Yeah, I think this is going to be okay.” He turns to looks at Sam. “The first couple of swings are gonna be a little sloppy, Sammy, until you got a feel for it. Don’t worry about it. You can go as easy as you need to ‘til you feel like you know what you’re doing.”

Sam picks up the flogger, measuring the length of the strands with his eyes and then the distance to Dean’s back. “Do I want the ends to hit you, or someplace in the middle?” he asks. His belly flutters a little nervously, but Dean’s face has an almost soft look of anticipation on it, and that does a lot to settle his nerves.

“The bottom half, mostly,” Dean says. “Just the ends if you’re going for a sharper, stinging kind of thing, but for power, you want the middle all the way to the ends.” 

“Let me know if I need to do anything differently to make it better,” Sam says, and feels a low tightening of anticipation in his own belly at having Dean spread out like this for him, doing this, for the first time, for nothing but the pleasure of it for Dean.

“I ain’t worried,” Dean says. “You’ll see when you swing it how it’s supposed to work. It’s an easy tool, Sammy, good for beginners.”

Sam swings the flogger a couple of times in the air, just to get used to the weight of it and to get a feel for the way it moves. Dean shivers, as though the sound alone is enough to rouse him, and that just tightens the knot of desire in the pit of Sam’s belly more.

He draws back and swings down, not as hard as he can, but firmly, and hits just where he’d aimed for, the middle of Dean’s back. The sound is loud, a kind of slap, except lower, almost thudding. Dean hisses in a breath and then sighs it out, and his lashes flutter a little. The flogger has left several lines of reddened skin across Dean’s back, something that is almost artful in a way. “Yeah,” Dean says. “Like that. You can go at least twice that hard for a while. You don’t have to skip the lower back like you do with a belt, because the impact spreads, so my kidneys are safe as long as you aren’t aiming right at them.” His voice is rough and low.

Sam’s hand flexes around the handle of the flogger and he swings again, harder this time, a little higher up. The sound is more a heavy, flat ‘smack’ this time, and Dean makes a short, sharp sound. The marks are redder, more present, and Sam pauses to reach out with his other hand and run his fingertips over them. They’re only slightly raised, barely welts at all, but Dean arches up into the touch with a low rumble, and Sam’s balls tighten. He glances beneath Dean and sees the puddle on the sheets has spread.

Doing this for nothing but the pleasure of it is different enough that Sam is a little shocked at how he’s reacting, at his own physical response to it, his skin prickling hot and his belly tight with want and the ache in his cock and balls.

He takes a half step back and shifts a little, and swings the flogger at a bit of an angle to strike Dean’s ass. Dean groans, and Sam’s want flares bright and white in his groin and in his head. He’s got a feel for it now, and Dean is shivering slightly, his hands clenched around the headboard, and Sam swings again, the middle of Dean’s back, and then doesn’t pause as he works his way a little lower, one stroke at a time, until Dean is panting harshly and groaning at every strike, and his back is a mass of red and white marks. 

“A little harder, Sammy,” Dean says, almost pleading, and want arcs jaggedly along Sam’s spine.

“Can I hit your thighs?” Sam asks, imagining red lines marking up that skin, and Dean’s breath hitches in his chest.

“Yeah, Sam, yeah,” Dean breathes, and Sam puts a little more force behind the blows, laying them first across the hard muscle of Dean’s ass -- Dean rocks back into the blows, which Sam finds almost unbearably hot -- first reddening the skin and then watching as the welts appear like magic, raised and red and white. Dean is letting out short, harsh cries now, not screams, but still actually cries of pain, and Sam doesn’t know what it is about them, would never have guessed they would work for him, but there is something about them, some sound of pleasure that’s obvious even mixed with the pain that makes them good.

Sam steps a little to the side and swings side-armed at the backs of Dean’s thighs, and Dean shouts harshly and his whole body rocks into a shudder. The wet spot on the sheets is as big as Sam’s hand now, and Dean’s breathing is harsh and desperate. Sam just knows without knowing how that the backs of Dean’s thighs are more tender skin, and doesn’t hit quite so hard, but Dean reacts so beautifully to each strike, crying out and going taut and gorgeous, that he lingers there until Dean goes from crying out, to letting out a hitching little sob that Sam senses is the precursor to almost too much, and he knows Dean could take more, but moves back up to his ass and then across his back again anyway, watching as Dean arches and writhes under the assault of the leather, and he thinks he might actually be able to get Dean to come if he went on long enough, but watching Dean, hearing Dean’s cries, is too much for him. He’s too turned on to draw it out that long and that hard, and when he drops the flogger on the side of the bed and climbs up behind Dean, fumbling for the lube, Dean’s breathing breaks down into short, harsh weeping. 

For a moment Sam isn’t sure what to do, if he’s done something too much or not enough, but Dean, voice strangled and wet, grates out, “Yeah, fuck me now, Sammy, use your cock in me,” and Sam struggles to get the lube open and slide a finger into Dean, who shoves back impatiently onto it, and is actually a little looser than usual, as though the pain relaxes him enough to make stretching him for Sam’s cock easier. Sam manages two fingers, twisting and stretching as quickly as he can safely do it, but Dean is gasping out little grating cries and shoving back eagerly, and when Sam goes to add another, grinds out, “I can take it like this, with the pain, I can take it,” in a way that is half-demanding and half-pleading. Sam shudders and scissors his fingers wide for another few seconds, while Dean groans, “Please, Sam, please,” and he honestly isn’t sure that Dean is loose enough, but he is aching and Dean is begging for it, and it’s enough to overcome his natural caution, though he slicks up very thoroughly and messily before he moves to press the head of his cock against Dean’s hole.

Dean goes still, though his breathing is still fast and ragged, and Sam pushes, slow and careful, listening for sounds of pain that are not good from Dean, ready to stop in spite of his own need and Dean’s urging, but the pain really does do something to ease Dean because it’s easier than usual, even the thickness of the head of his cock goes in a little easier, though Dean still shouts at it, and Sam is pressing in one slow inch at a time, his whole body tense and hard at the feel of his cock pressing Dean’s tight heat open for him.

“Hurts,” Dean says, but it’s half moan and in no way an objection, and Sam moans a little in response and drags one hand down the welted skin of Dean’s back. Dean cries out and shudders, clamping down tight on Sam’s cock for a moment, and then loosening enough that more of Sam slides into him almost easily.

“God, Dean,” Sam says thickly, feeling like he’s nothing but nerve endings, like his whole body can feel the exquisite silk pressure of Dean around his cock, desire screaming down his spine and crackling in the cradle between his hipbones as he watches with utter fascination as his cock disappears between the bright red cheeks of Dean’s ass.

“Need it,” Dean husks out, a strangled whisper, and Sam knows Dean, knows how hard it is for Dean to admit to a thing like that even now, and it makes his hips jerk forward, briefly out of control, shoving more of his cock into Dean’s ass so that Dean lets out a harsh, hurt sound that is still, somehow, encouraging, even demanding. Sam pulls out and adds more lube because he is nearing the edge of his self control, and he wants to pound Dean, wants it to be wet enough not to truly hurt Dean, and Dean makes a wretched, needy sound that feels like a fist around Sam’s balls, it’s so good, so raw and wanting, and when he presses back in he keeps shoving the whole way, the whole length of him in one insistent stroke, and Dean shivers under him, gasping out little hurt sounds that arc across Sam’s skin like electric current. Then he’s buried deep in Dean’s body, all the way and Dean is twisting against and around him, pressing back and panting, and Sam uses both hands to stroke across Dean’s back and Dean goes so tight around him that Sam lets out a sharp cry and holds back his orgasm through sheer force of will. 

“Sam,” Dean groans. “Sam, Sam,” and Sam takes it as invitation and drags himself out and then surges back inside. Dean shouts and the headboard creaks under the force of his grip, but he shoves back, too, onto Sam, still twisting, his body tight and writhing, and Sam only manages three long, hard strokes into Dean when Dean goes taut and still and then comes, his ass clenching around Sam’s cock as he jerks out his pleasure into the air beneath him.

Sam groans and bends forward, fitting his long body along Dean’s hot, hot back, and Dean cries out at the contact but doesn’t pull away as Sam thrusts into him, dragging the sweaty skin of his chest against the welts, feeling them against his skin, hearing Dean make soft pain sounds now, almost mewling and unbearably erotic. Sam would like to be able to last, but Dean is too much for him, Dean strips him of his control, and he shoves and presses and shudders above and against Dean for less than a minute before his balls tighten and his cock spasms and then shoots hard while Sam moans and grinds hard against Dean’s ass with his hips to be as deep inside as he can be when he comes.

They are both breathing like they’ve just finished an olympic competition, and Sam feels like he could stay right where he is for at least a day and be perfectly content, but Dean’s arms are trembling where they’re stretched out and supporting his weight, so Sam peels himself carefully off of Dean’s back, still turned on enough to shiver a little when Dean hisses with pain, and then carefully shifts backward and pulls out of Dean. Dean makes a soft sound that could mean anything, but drags himself slowly forward so that he’s leaning against the headboard, which means his arms really have to be tired. Sam, a little clumsy and slow from orgasm, works the cuffs free of Dean’s wrists, and Dean lets his arms fall to his sides. After a few long seconds, Dean turns to face Sam. 

His eyes are red and his face is tracked with tears, but Sam feels a jolt of recognition at the look on Dean’s face, understands exactly what it is, the softness there, the lack of tension in Dean’s whole body. Dean is resting easy, and Sam feels a surge of satisfaction so deep that it’s almost painful that he had done this to Dean, done it _for_ Dean, pushed him into the place that Sam has only just come to understand that he himself needs and craves. Sam leans in and kisses Dean, and Dean lets him do it, all soft lips parting and gentle, almost languorous in his responses. Dean leans into him, too, letting his weight rest against Sam without resistance, and want that he’s too spent to physically respond to twists at Sam’s groin. Dean is beautiful like this, his face open and gentle.

When Sam pulls back from his lips, Dean shifts down the bed and sprawls onto his side, then slowly shifts onto his back deliberately, gasping a little, but flexing, too, pressing his welted skin against the sheets, and the look on Dean’s face is amazing, like the reminder of the sheets against his sore skin is good for him, satisfying. He closes his eyes and breathes slow and steady for long seconds. Sam shifts carefully down the bed and lies down beside Dean on his side, so he can watch Dean like this.

If Sam had still had any lingering doubts about being able to give Dean what he needs, they are unquestionably allayed at seeing Dean like this, so obviously basking in the aftermath of pleasure.

Dean reaches out without opening his eyes and his hand lands on Sam’s chest, unerringly atop the spell. He says, “Sam,” and that’s all, but the gratitude is laced so heavily through his voice that Sam doesn’t need to hear the thank you to know it’s there.

“I can’t believe how much I liked doing that to you,” Sam admits quietly, and Dean’s lips curve faintly. “I still wasn’t really sure…”

“I was sure,” Dean says, still smiling faintly, still not opening his eyes. “I knew once you saw it clear, without any of the heavier stuff clouding it up, you’d want me like this.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “You looked… you sounded…” He doesn’t know exactly how to finish either sentence, so lets them fade.

“You did good,” Dean says. “You got a good feel for it.”

“It was just watching for how you reacted,” Sam says.

“Some people don’t learn that, Sammy, or don’t care. Some people, it’s all about how _they_ feel.” Dean opens his eyes; they still look soft, almost dazed. “You got a knack.”

Sam thinks about the way Dean had moved under the flogger, and can’t imagine not watching Dean’s body and listening to the sounds he makes and using those things to guide him. It _had_ been about the way he had felt, too, but Dean’s body, Dean’s responses, had been what had driven the way Sam had felt. He thinks that probably makes him a bad sadist, but it doesn’t bother him, as long as he’s enough of a sadist to give Dean what he needs.

Dean looks absolutely wrecked, flushed and soft-eyed, and Sam is content to be enough of a sadist to give him this.

The bandage on Dean’s shoulder that had been covering the bite mark Sam had left there the day before has come loose from sweat and exertion, and is barely hanging on by one corner. Sam looks at it, feeling that rolling jolt that’s coming to be familiar now, that press of desire that slides under his skin and makes him want things that he never would have guessed at, if not for Dean, if not for all the careful preparation Dean had done over the past weeks, and the past couple of days. He reaches up and tugs it away, considering the still raw-looking marks of his teeth set into Dean’s golden skin. Dean blinks at him, still soft, but there is a faint, dark eddy in his eyes as well, a lust-look that Sam is even more familiar with, and which stokes his own banked lust higher.

“Yeah,” Dean says, low and easy, his lips curling a little as he watches Sam’s face. “Now’s a good time for it, Sammy.”

Sam considers that, too, for a few long seconds, then asks, “It wouldn’t be better to wait until you’ve got some pleasure to balance it out?” It’s a sincere question, and one he has been wondering a little about. How much straight pain is good for Dean, and what kind? There have to be things that Dean wouldn’t like, or at least wouldn’t like without some pleasure to… Sam isn’t sure exactly. Balance it, maybe?

Dean pats Sam’s knee. “I’m about as hardcore as they come, with the pain, Sam,” he says. “Stuff for fun is sometimes better with a little pleasure, but this ain’t for fun. This is something you want for real, and I’m still hyped up on endorphins enough to take it, but clear headed enough to really be able to feel and remember it.” His eyes glitter. “I want to remember every time you set your teeth in me there.”

Sam gives a little shiver at the intensity of Dean’s gaze, his cock stirring, but still too exhausted to rouse fully. He doesn’t ask Dean if he’s sure. Dean has been nothing but up front about everything once Sam had figured out the things that Dean needed, and besides that, Dean is still so loose that Sam would see the tension in his body if Dean felt anything that might be hesitation about it.

Sam shifts his weight up so that he’s straddling Dean’s hips and slides a hand around the back of Dean’s neck. “Lean up a little,” he says, pressing gently at the back of Dean’s neck as he does, and Dean winces as he shifts his back up off the bed a little, but even as he winces his breath catches in a little gasp of pleasure. Sam’s cock stirs a little more, half hard now, and he pushes a couple of pillows behind Dean’s shoulders and under his head, just to tilt him up enough to give Sam a good angle. One of Dean’s hands comes up and tangles in Sam’s hair, tugging through it, and then stroking it back away from Sam’s cheek.

“I like the way you look at me like this, Sammy,” Dean says huskily. Sam glances up to meet Dean’s gaze, brows faintly arched in question. Those dark eddies are back in Dean’s eyes, and he doesn’t sound remotely bothered when he clarifies, “When you’re going to hurt me because you want it for you. You get a set to your jaw or something, a set to your face. Not sure exactly what it is. But I like it.”

“Is it new?” Sam asks curiously.

Dean nods. “Since when you spanked me,” he says, and that charming flush touches the tops of his cheekbones. “Before that you wanted it because I wanted it, and it didn’t cross your mind that you might want it, too. You didn’t let yourself think of it. But when you spanked me, and then later, you were mad at the hotel when I asked you, but once it started you wanted it as much as I did, and it’s a good look on you, Sam. One I think I’ll see more of now that you got a better idea of what makes things work for you.”

Sam doesn’t doubt that Dean is right. “I want the scar,” he says, eyes flicking to the marks of his teeth in Dean’s shoulder that are already there, and he doesn’t feel bad or guilty about it at all. 

“I know,” Dean says, voice still a husky burr. “I want it, too. Want you to set your mark on me. I like it that you want to.”

Now Sam’s cheeks feel a little warm, pleased though he isn’t sure exactly what it is he’s reacting to, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. They both want it, and that is enough.

“Do it now,” Dean says, using the hand in Sam’s hair to tug Sam downward, and Sam doesn’t resist. He licks along the line of Dean’s shoulder, tasting the red, raw place where he’s hurt, and Dean let’s out a long breath and his hand tightens in Sam’s hair. When Sam sets his teeth to the spot, lining them up as well as he can with the existing marks, knowing that it won’t be perfect, but perfect isn’t what he’s after anyway, Dean inhales shakily. Sam pauses for a long moment, feeling the way Dean is still in a loose sprawl against him, not even tensing at the impending pain, and liking that, too, that Dean isn’t resisting him even with some kind of unconscious tensing of his body. Then he bites down hard, hand holding the back of Dean’s neck tight, and Dean groans, low and hoarse, and the unhealed wounds begin to bleed again almost at once, but Sam doesn’t stop right away like he might have only a few days ago. He presses his teeth into Dean’s flesh and muscle until blood stains his mouth and Dean writhes a little and lets out a short, harsh sound of pain, and the blood is flowing freely from Dean’s shoulder. He pulls back and looks at Dean, who is watching Sam with dazed eyes, and licks the blood away from his lips a little self-consciously, not because he especially wants or likes the taste of Dean’s blood, but because for this, this one thing, this mark that he wants to set into Dean’s skin, it seems wrong just to wipe the blood away.

Dean makes a soft sound, something like appreciation, and then pulls Sam back down to kiss him, as though he wants the taste of his own blood in Sam’s mouth. It’s a soft kiss, lingering, and almost exactly matches the soft warmth in Sam’s chest at Dean saying that he wants Sam to mark him. Sam is aware that Dean is mostly hard again by the end of it, pressed gently against the curve of Sam’s ass. They’re both mostly hard, and while Sam is pretty sure he can’t actually come again, at least for a little while, he’s not that surprised. He still feels almost starved for Dean, as though he could go on at the same pace as the last couple of days for weeks, at least, getting hard again almost as soon as they finish because Dean is just that fucking gorgeous, just that _desireable_ , that it hardly seems odd.

“You’re right,” Sam breathes, feeling like he has to admit it out loud, has to claim it and make it his own. “I like hurting you. I like seeing you react to it. It gets me off to see you come all undone from the pain.”

Dean smiles, sloe-eyed and easy. “Lucky fuckin’ me,” he says, tone light, but sounding serious all the same. “If we didn’t line up like that, it wouldn’t change how I want you, but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t have missed it.”

“I don’t want you to miss anything,” Sam says, and shifts back a little, letting his ass come to rest a little more firmly against Dean’s cock. Dean bucks a little, pressing up. Blood trails in slender rivulets down his chest.

“Don’t think about it now,” Dean says quietly. “We’re good, Sammy. We mostly fit, and anyplace we don’t, we can work out later. Just let it be good and don’t worry at it.”

Sam thinks of what Dean had said: that Sam should just keep doing what he has been doing, not looking too closely at all that he might want or need, because Dean can do it for him until Sam can feel how he feels and be okay with it. Even as he wonders if it’s even possible, he can sort of feel himself doing it, letting it all go, letting his overactive brain focus on the now, on what he wants and feels right now, and Sam lets the rest of it retreat. 

Right now he is hard, but probably unable to come again easily, Dean is hard and pressed up against his ass, and Dean’s face is so mellow it’s almost sweet. Right now Dean is bleeding willingly for Sam, which is a bright shiver of something in Sam’s head, bleeding so that Sam can set his mark into Dean, and as good as that is, Sam is still Sam, and thus ultra-aware of all the ways that the human mouth is filthy and a bite mark left untended could lead to all kinds of complications that Sam doesn’t think either of them want to deal with.

“I’m going to clean up that bite,” Sam says. “I need alcohol wipes and bandages, but I don’t want to mess with any of the stuff you’re still hiding from me.”

Dean smiles faintly. “I’m not hiding it, I’m just savin’ it up, Sam. Some of this stuff will be more fun if you don’t know what to expect.” Dean arches his back a little, stretching beneath Sam, maybe incidentally bumping his cock against Sam’s ass, maybe doing it on purpose (it’s hard to tell), and then sits up. “I’ll take care of the clean up. Why don’t you get in the shower.”

Sam is mildly amused. “We just got out of the shower. Is this your unsubtle way of telling me I stink?” he asks.

Dean smirks, but darts in and steals a quick kiss. “Yeah, more or less. Ain’t either of us put on anything resembling deodorant for a while, so we probably both stink. You get the shower going, and I’ll disinfect the bite and be along in a minute. You can bandage me up after.”

“When is it my turn to boss you around?” Sam grumbles, swinging his leg over Dean so he can slide off the edge of the bed.

Dean laughs. “It’ll come to you,” he says easily.


	32. 32

Sam gets the shower running and steps in, more rinsing the sweat off of his body than actually washing, though he takes the bottle of shower gel and hits all the high places with it, just to make sure, and washes his hair, doing it in the light and making plans to try to finger comb it into something like submission when Dean joins him. Dean’s motions are still easy and relaxed, and he doesn’t object when Sam takes the soap and lathers him up, tilting his head back and just letting Sam wash him, the bite on his shoulder red and livid, the marks on his back clear and making Dean hiss a little when Sam turns him so that the water sluices down them.

“Damn, that’s good,” Dean says, his voice a low rumble. “I don’t think I ever took a shower straight after before. Stings.”

Sam smiles a little, pleased, his mind already working even as he washes Dean’s back with careful, downward swipes of his hands, thinking of other ways to stretch out Dean’s rest by stretching out his pain in a dozen minor ways. He thinks of giving Dean a back rub, after, and imagines Dean squirming beneath him, and can’t wait to try it.

“Hungry at all, Sammy?” Dean asks when the water had been turned off and Sam in gently patting Dean’s back as dry as he can with the still damp towel.

“Not in the least,” Sam says. “How are you for…” He hesitates, trying to find the right words. “If time works the way that it seems to with the… the cage, by the time you’re ready to go again I’ll probably be ready, too.”

Dean glances over his shoulder at him, eyes considering. “We don’t have to do it all at once,” he says carefully.

Sam nods, he gets it, but. “Now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t seem to think about anything else,” he admits. “I’m hard again, but not ready to come. We’d have to do something to… soften me up.”

“If you can take a few seconds of relatively minor discomfort, I can make you soft again,” Dean says, sounding certain, but with an underlying tone of something a little harder and harsher beneath it, something greedy and intent. “But if you want to just wait a while ‘til you settle, we can do that, too.”

“I’m not sure I’m going to settle,” Sam admits, feeling himself flush a little as Dean turns to regard him thoughtfully. “Just seeing you naked with my bite mark on you is enough to… just.” He isn’t sure how to finish, but Dean just nods.

“I can cover that at least,” Dean says, and circles around behind the bed to see to his shoulder. Sam avoids looking at the table as he skirts around the bed and flops down on it on his back, his whole body buzzing a little with fear and anticipation, though the fear doesn’t seem to be doing anything to settle his erection into something more manageable.

When Dean comes around the side of the bed, there is a clean white bandage covering the bite mark, which Sam sees with a little pang. He can’t believe how much seeing the marks of his teeth in Dean’s skin does it for him, would never have believed it even just a few weeks ago, but there is no denying it.

Dean sits down on the side of the bed and lifts one hand, hesitates, and then settles it onto Sam’s chest to trace the line of the spell there.

“I don’t know if I said it,” he says slowly. “And maybe even if I did, maybe it bears repeating. Thank you for this, Sammy.”

Sam smiles. “I would do anything for you, you know,” he says before he can think to censor it, but Dean just smiles faintly.

“We’d do anything for each other,” he says almost matter-of-factly. “That’s how it’s supposed to work. But this is bigger than all that, this is your promise, and since it happened, since you promised, I feel…” Dean pauses, face folding into uncertain lines. “I feel like things are going to be alright. That your promise is enough to make things turn out alright.”

“You worked the magic,” Sam says.

“But you agreed, you cooperated, you made it more than I coulda made it alone,” Dean says. “If we’re both in it together, I got no doubt we can get through near anything that comes our way.”

“I shouldn’t have asked you to…” Sam says, but Dean shakes his head, cutting him off.

“It ain’t got anything to do with should’ve,” he says. “You did the only thing you could think to do, and don’t think I don’t know that it was because you had trust in me, faith that I would stop you if you needed stopping. I could have never killed you to keep that faith; I don’t got it in me to do that, Sam. There isn’t anything in my life more important than you, and you and me together. But this is better. We ought to send the witches a fruit basket or something.” He smirks wryly.

“Or something,” Sam agrees, returning Dean’s wry smirk. It fades a little after a few seconds and Sam asks, “What are you going to do,” gesturing down his body toward his mostly hard cock.

“Hurt you just a little, and then you’ll need to list or whatever to keep yourself down while I put it on you.” Dean’s expression is serious. “We don’t have to do this now, Sam. We got time.”

“I know but now that it’s there in my head, I…” He shakes his head a little. “I feel like I have to know. And.” Sam’s face grows a little hot, and Dean looks at him, a faint smile curving his lips upward. “And I want to give it to you,” he manages. “Almost as much as I want you to pierce me. Some part of it being for you, just for you because you want it… that does it for me, too. It seems like almost everything does it for me.” He feels his blush deepen, but Dean’s smiles is soft and warm.

“Okay, then, but you should know, hard as I just came, it might be a little while. You might end up caught up in the cage for a while. Are you sure, Sammy?”

Sam is. He nods, though there is something thick and a little anxious caught in his throat. “Tie me down, though,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be hard, but I need my hands at least.”

“Lie on back then,” Dean says, and Sam scoots down to lie in the middle of the bed, and this time watches Dean as he fixes the cuffs around Sam’s wrists and then draws them down the ropes running along the head of the bed until his arms rest on the mattress. Dean stuffs a pillow under his head and then works another under Sam’s ass, and Sam arches helpfully to let him get it into place.

“I know I told you this, but it’s another one of those things that I feel like I can’t say often enough or big enough to make you understand what I really mean,” Dean says, voice low and contemplating. “You’re gorgeous, Sammy, and I’ve wanted you forever. When you let me start touching you, right at first, just the little touches and I started to think that you might be willing to be mine, going slow was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

Sam actually grins a little. “I can’t believe how patient you were,” he says truthfully. “I wouldn’t have believed you had it in you.”

“It was important,” is all Dean says. Then he stands and circles around to the head of the bed and comes back with the shiny silver curve of the cock ring loosely clasped in one hand. “Brace yourself, Sammy. This one part ain’t gonna be any fun.”

Sam tenses a little, and Dean reaches between his spread thighs and grips Sam’s balls hard in one fist jerking on them hard enough to make Sam cry out, his eyes abruptly stinging with tears. “Sorry, Sorry, sweetheart,” Dean soothes, but it has the desired effect. Sam’s cock wilts quickly, his balls throbbing even after Dean releases them, though Sam deliberately averts his gaze when Dean opens the cage and fits it around Sam’s cock in a quick, practiced motion.

“I can’t wait to make you one just for you,” Dean says in a low, serious voice. “Make it with my own hands, something just for you and me.”

Just the words are enough to send blood south of Sam’s navel despite the still present ache in his balls. He doesn’t look, but he doesn’t list or otherwise mentally distract himself from it either. He watches Dean face as Dean watches Sam’s cock, and lets himself feel the slow pressure-constriction of his cock pressing against the inside of the metal of the cage. The pain in his balls retreats, first just fading, and then replaced by the feel of his blood thud-thudding at the base of his cock, trying to fill up his flesh and being prevented by the device.

Sam starts to feel that slow drag out of his mind again, and can hear himself gasping as though from a distance somewhere. His attention is fixed on the pulse in his groin and also the look on Dean’s face, the avarice there, the flush of heat across his cheeks.

“I don’t know what it is,” Dean says. “But, damn, does it look sweet on you, Sammy.”

Dean throws a glance up at Sam’s face, drops his eyes back to Sam’s cock, and then raises them again to Sam’s face. “I can see you slipping away, slipping into it,” he says. “Your balls okay, Sam?”

“Yeah,” Sam says hoarsely. “It only hurt for a few seconds.”

Dean shifts up onto the bed and lies with his thighs between Sam’s pressing them open, half sitting up for the moment, so he can still see Sam’s cock in its prison. Sam’s heartbeat thuds at the base of his cock as it tries to fill with blood, and he can feel it washing him away from thought, fixating everything on the feel of his body. He looks down, following Dean’s gaze, even though he knows what the sight of it does to him, because he’s got just enough higher brain function left to want to give it all to Dean, give it up completely and let his body override thought in that way it had before.

The sight is just as mesmerizing as it had been the last time, the sight of his cock captured in bright metal driving thought far back in his mind so that he isn’t thinking but only feeling, and he has just enough awareness left to hear himself start making that sound, that opened mouthed soft wail of a sound that he seems to have no control over.

“Yeah,” Dean says, eyes glittering, darting up to Sam’s face. “Let it all go for me, Sam, just let me take you like this.”

“Dean,” Sam says, choked and broken up by the sound that he can’t stop making, and Dean dips in and kisses his open, keening mouth, something Sam tries to reciprocate, but can barely react to with the heavy pulse ratcheting up between his thighs, the pressure wrapped around the base of his cock, the constriction, the not-pain but something else, something awash with sensation at not being able to get hard.

Dean scoots down the bed, pressing Sam’s thighs wider, and catches the cage in his hand, and Sam watches, breathless, as Dean dips down and runs his tongue along the narrow gaps in the cage, touching metal and skin, slick and hot, and just driving Sam’s need to get hard higher and more urgently, so that the sound Sam is making hitches and stutters.

“Look at you, so helpless for me,” Dean murmurs, and that also sounds like it’s coming from far away, but is still enough to cause Sam to arch his back and try to press up toward Dean’s mouth with his caged cock, though the slick wetness of his tongue only makes the pulse at the base of his cock pound harder and more relentlessly, dragging that moaning wail out of Sam’s chest from someplace deep inside.

Dean moves up Sam’s body until he’s kneeling between his thighs and reaches behind Sam, but Sam is lost in sensation and doesn’t take note of what it might be until Dean slips a finger into Sam’s ass, slick and sudden, and Sam jerks in surprise, his cock aching in its prison, but the feel of Dean inside him so good, even with the thudding pulse of the cage distracting him, it’s good to have Dean’s finger inside him. He chokes on the wailing sound a little, but it doesn’t stop -- Sam seems to have no control over it at all-- and Dean says, “God, Sam, you’re tight like this.”

Each rush of blood that tries to make its way into Sam’s cock makes his whole body clench, so he isn’t surprised by Dean’s words, but he can’t keep them focused in his head either. He writhes a little on Dean’s finger, and then cries out when Dean works another one into him, feeling his cock pressed against the unforgiving metal, feeling the press of Dean’s fingers inside him, so hypersensitive that it feels like he can feel the curves of Dean’s knuckles. He tries to say Dean’s name, but can’t get it out through the groaning wail of sound escaping from his throat, and just writhes a little, rocking forward as if that would somehow relieve the pressure around his cock, and then rocking back onto Dean’s fingers, feeling every curve, every callous, feeling everything and thinking nothing. 

Dean slides his fingertips along Sam’s prostate and Sam shrieks out a little sound of pleasure all mixed up with agony, good, but enough to make his cock ache even more as it tries to get hard and cannot, all the blood thudding at the base trying to fill his flesh and being denied, and a choking little sob breaks up the steady, low wailing.

“Sam,” Dean says, his voice low and rough, and he shoves up between Sam’s thighs, his cock pressed against Sam’s hole -- Sam isn’t even sure when the fingers had come out -- and Sam half wants to beg for it and half wants to plead against it, it’s all so mixed up, thoughts flitter across his brain but none of them stick, he is entirely wrapped up in the aching, thrumming pulse of his body, his cock still soft but needful, the idea of being filled up while he can’t reach any kind of release, faintly scared but mostly delirious with the sensation shuddering through him, his skin hot and damp with sweat, his mouth open and moaning out that endless, helpless wailing sound.

When Dean presses into him, Sam’s whole body convulses, pleasure at being pressed open, the scrape of Dean’s shaft along his prostate, the absolute desperation of his imprisoned cock, and the wail he’s loosing into the air becomes a series of stuttering cries.

“God, oh God, Sammy, yes,” Dean grates out, and then it is a blur of pleasure and ache and desire for release as Dean thrusts into him, bright sparks of pleasure inside while his cock can’t respond, is trapped and his heartbeat feels like it’s throbbing just on the outer edge of the cage, trying to force blood into his cock and failing, failing, and Dean’s cock pounding him while Dean groans out words that Sam’s ears can’t decipher, filled with his own cries. Sam’s vision is a blur, his head is filled with pleasure and desperation in equal measure, stretched out between Dean’s cock inside him and the cage forcing him to stay soft, no thought at all except the simple, steady comfort of having Dean there, Dean taking care of him, Dean won’t let anything go wrong, but all else washed clean and white with need.

“The way you sound, Sam, and your face, God,” Dean snarls out, bracing himself up with his arms so that he can look down and watch Sam as his cock pistons in and out of Sam, driving Sam upward, pleasure immense, but strangled by the cage, too, pleasure that he can’t fully respond to or grasp with his cock caught firmly and held soft, though he can feel his balls clenching needily. Dean swipes his fingers along Sam’s belly and brings them away wet with Sam’s precome, and then sucks them into his mouth, Dean’s face drawn into sharp lines of lust and pleasure, and just the sight of Dean sucking Sam’s precome off his own fingers is enough to jolt Sam so hard that he bucks beneath Dean, and the wailing sound becomes a series of sharp, harsh cries. 

He feels trapped on the edge of orgasm, but an orgasm so stretched out, so needful and still so out of reach that Sam thrashes a little, arching his hips so that Dean’s cock slams directly into his prostate, and the pulse of thwarted blood trying to press its way into his cock throbs at the base, throbs in his balls, makes the big muscles of his thighs clench and the his abdomen flex with urgency, need so intense it suspends all thought, makes his mind white and empty and clean, almost like that breaking place, but stretched out longer than those few moments have ever lasted before, like he is floating in that sharp and urgent expanse of desperation, trapped in it for a long time, for a small eternity, when it had all been fast before, a burst of intensity, and it’s still intense, it still makes him reel and shake and shudder and want, but forever, not just seconds but eons of that shattering needful feeling.

He tries to gasp out Dean’s name and can’t, can hear himself distantly almost screaming, and Dean has his hips in both hand and is up on his knees, jerking Sam’s ass onto his cock, his gaze flitting between Sam’s cock and his face, Dean’s expression full of a kind of tense and euphoric greed. The expression is what does it, Sam will think later, but in those moments where he stares at it, fascinated and enraptured, he thinks nothing at all except that something in his brain and his chest and his belly and his balls clenches tight to see it on Dean’s face, and Sam’s body jerks, shuddering, bucking against Dean’s hands, and although he still can’t get hard, his cock is still soft and trapped and helpless in the cage, his balls clench and he feels the orgasm washing through him, a tidal wave of feeling, bright sparks arching his back into a taut curve, his ass clamping down around Dean’s thick and brutal cock, arms jerking in his restraints, hands tingling and fisting, his legs curling up to jam his knees into Dean’s ribs, his toes clenching, and it’s not like any other orgasm he’s ever experienced, he is mindless with it, his whole body spasming as if he were riding a jolt of endless electric current.

Dean lets out a sound of helpless, hoarse pleasure that holds a kind of triumphant tone to it, and plunges into Sam, talking, but Sam can’t decipher the words, but just Dean’s voice is enough to send more jolting spasms of pleasure shuddering through him, and he can see just enough, the look on Dean’s face is just enough, that he has a single clear thought in his delirium, which is: _I will give up all control to make him look like that._

He doesn’t feel Dean tense or come, is too wrapped up in his own body’s response, but he must, and he must press Sam’s juddering body down flat with his own, pinning him, because when Sam eventually swims back into a kind of hazy awareness of himself, Dean has withdrawn his cock from Sam’s body and is kneeling over him, hands stroking across his arms and chest and belly and thighs.

“Shh, Sammy,” he is murmuring. “Shh, you’re alright.” It sounds like something he might have been saying for a while, and Sam realizes he’s still wailing softly, more a whine now than a wail really, and even when he realizes it, it takes him a long time to make himself quiet.

Dean dips down and kisses Sam’s brow and then both cheeks. Dean’s face is flushed and sheened with sweat, his chest, too, from what Sam can see of it, and as soon as he notices it he’s aware that his own body is damp with sweat, too, and that he’s slick from the navel down, presumably with his own come. He blinks blearily up at Dean, who smiles at Sam so tenderly that Sam’s heart seems to shudder out of tempo in his chest for a moment.

“Are you with me, Sam?” Dean asks, gently. He strokes Sam’s damp hair back from his forehead. 

Sam nods dumbly, mouth dry, and then manages to stutter out, “Still a little out of it,” through lips that feel numb.

“I’m going to take the cage off, Sam, you list or close your eyes or whatever you have to do to get through it,” Dean says.

Sam doesn’t have to do anything, though, his body is completely spent, and though he shivers a little at the feel of Dean handling his cock and balls and deliberately doesn’t look down to see, he doesn’t have to list to stay calm and easy. Dean just drops the cage onto the bed off to one side and then settles down half-beside and half-atop Sam, kissing him in oddly random places, his shoulder, the hinge of his jaw, just above his right nipple.

“I’ll clean you up in a minute,” Dean says. “But first tell me.”

“I…” Sam says, and licks his lips. “I can’t. It’s all a jumble of, just, sensation, just.” He shakes his head. “But with you fucking me, Dean, I went to the breaking place, but I… It was like I stayed there forever, not just a few minutes, but like I was pulled into it and just… floated. I think… did I come? It felt like I came, but it didn’t feel like coming exactly. It was all, it was pulled apart. I can’t…” He makes a helpless gesture, more just a twisting of his hands, which are still bound, along with a roll of his shoulders in a kind of shrug, and closes his eyes. “I can’t explain it.” He opens his eyes again to look at Dean. “But it almost doesn’t matter. I mean, it does, but it’s more important that it was what you wanted?” He uptilts the last few words, making it a question.

“You were fucking perfect,” Dean says, low and gruff, still with that slightly greedy look of avarice eddying through his eyes. “Tight and shaking and writhing and making that fucking sound, Sam, like you’re dying and loving every second of it. Goddamn, just thinking of it is enough to make me feel a little crazy, and having you like that… all helpless and out of your fucking mind with it. I told you I don’t gotta have it to survive, Sammy, but having you like that is like… it’s like _owning_ you, and I ain’t a guy that feels like he’s got to own people most times, but having you like that makes me want it, least-wise while it’s going on.”

Sam _knows_ that feeling, recognizes it with a little surge of understanding, because he normally isn’t possessive either, not like that, but hadn’t he felt that way with Dean the first time he’d really had Dean, on hadn’t he demanded that Dean be his and no one else’s, so he understands, and he is a little thrilled and a little turned on to know that Dean gets that from the cage, that sense of… possession.

“And yeah,” Dean continues, low and slow and kind of thoughtful. “You came, I felt you do it, all tight and clenching around my cock, but it was slower than what it’s been, longer, like it was all stretched out. Drove me half out of my mind, and all the time you were making that sound, Sam, I can’t even tell you what kind of sound it is, really, just that it sounds like you want to die and you’re half a second from blowing your load all at the same time, a mixed up sound, but it goes straight to my nuts and twists there, hearing you make it. I know you got some reservations about the cage and I already promised I’d never do it without your permission, but Sam, you love it. It does it for you, you gotta know that now.” It’s not quite a question, though Dean’s brows are faintly arched.

Sam nods. “With you fucking me,” he begins and then stalls out and tries to get his scattered and jumbled thoughts together enough to explain. “Just the cage alone is something… almost something… debilitating,” he tries. “I’m not sure how to explain it better, and I’m still not thinking all that clearly. But with you fucking me at the same time, it’s…” He clenches his bound fists and his hip actually rock upward a little, as though in response to the memory of the feeling. “It’s different, it’s less like just being out of control and more like being under _your_ control, and that makes it feel… safer, I guess. Not as… aimless, or as… I don’t know how to say, Dean. If you’re fucking me with it on, you’re there like a touchstone and that changes it from something that feels a little scary and dangerous to something that feels… different. Good. Actually. Better than good. Amazing. But it’s still so… overwhelming.”

Dean nods. “I can tell, Sammy, try not to worry about it. We won’t do it unless we’re set up safe and you’re willing to let go awhile and let me take over. That’s what it is for me. Having you completely at my fuckin’ mercy.” Dean shudders a little. “I don’t gotta have it, but damn, baby brother, it’s good.”

Sam shivers a little himself. It had been good, and while he is still a little scared of the cage, he’s less worried about it than he had been. He trusts Dean to take care of him while he’s so fundamentally out of his mind, and… and it’s pointless to pretend he doesn’t want to give Dean what he wants. All the things he wants. He thinks of having his nipples pierced and shivers again.

Dean kisses the point of Sam’s chin and then the side of his throat. “You want me to turn you loose?” he asks.

Sam thinks about that for a few seconds, and then sighs. “Yeah, I guess. We, Jesus, we need to shower _again_. And we should eat something. But after that I just want to lay here and kind of zone. I’m not resting exactly. I don’t think the cage will ever make me really rest. I’m too… I don’t know, too wired about it. But I’m definitely extremely relaxed, and even without the really deep resting feeling, I kind of want to wallow in it.”

Dean drops a kiss onto Sam’s lips. “Yeah, you and me both,” Dean says, and gives Sam a warm little smile. “We mostly just need to rinse off. I think it’s got to be your turn to get some food together at this point.” Dean smirks. “I’ll have ham salad sandwiches and that jello stuff.”

“Gross,” Sam says, but he’s smiling a little too. “After. I mean. Once we eat and rinse off and everything, can you tie me back down? I like…” He shrugs a little self-consciously. “I like it.”

“Course,” Dean says easily, not looking as though the idea is anything odd at all, which relieves a little of Sam’s embarrassment at asking. 

Neither of them immediately move, though, and eventually Sam says, “If we’ve got another couple of days here, I kind of want to do another round of ‘something for me and something for you’ off your kink table.” He pauses. “In the light, I mean.”

“We got time,” Dean says, eyes bright as he looks at Sam. “We can do that and most anything else you can think of you want to try.”

Though he still isn’t quite ‘resting easy,’ as Dean calls it, Sam feels a little sideways slip of his mind that he recognizes as a step in that direction. Just the idea that they’re going to take the time to… to just, well, play, just try things and experiment and find out some of the things that get each other off is enough to send Sam slipping in that direction.

“Feed me,” Dean says, and reaches up to free Sam’s hands.


	33. Epilogue

At least a week or two after the spell changes from a wound to a scar, Sam is stowing newly-made saltrock shells in the trunk, and finds the silver knife. It's wrapped in a chamois and tucked carefully back behind the place where the ammo is arranged by weapon and gauge. He holds it in his hands for a minute or more. It's still rust-brown with dried blood. Then he wraps it again and puts it back.

He knows, though, what he's going to do.

He does what he's good at, he researches it, he memorizes it, and there is only one thing to practice. Sam knows all of it like the back of his hand, all of it that is about magic.

It's the Impala that he practices. It's the only part of it he's never copied, drawn, or studied in some capacity, and while he's seen it nearly every day for most of his life, he really hadn't ever paid a lot of attention to it until Dean had carved it into his chest. He could probably draw it from memory anyway, just by osmosis, but probably isn't good enough. He spends a while using his hunting knife to carve it into everything that can be carved any time that Dean isn't right there with him.

Sam has never done anything like the thing he is carefully planning.

For the first time, Sam seriously considers the idea of utilizing the internet in relation to Dean.

He doesn't, in the end. He suspects it will be mostly porn, which he doesn't care about, with a little bit of aftercare, which he already knows everything there is to know about, and maybe some psychological speculation, which would be useless, because everything about Dean defies speculation based on the rest of the population.

Sam doesn't need to speculate on why. Dean has told him. Dean tells him pretty much anything Sam asks, with only occasional stints of deceit, usually in pursuit of better orgasms via the element of surprise, but also because Dean is still Dean, and thus is still a dick sometimes for no apparent reason.

A week after he finds the knife, he leaves Dean watching Bonanza in a motel room in Tampa with the absolutely truthful excuse that he wants to get something out of the car. He cleans the knife carefully with the chamois it's wrapped in, and the dried blood flakes off easily. The knife gleams sleekly at him, a long slender blade that's almost more a stiletto than a dagger. The hilt is carved with symbols and inset with stones with varying properties, but none of that really matters to Sam. He isn't going to be doing magic with it.

He goes back into their room with the hilt in his hand, blade down, not hiding it but not displaying it either.

Dean looks up at once, though, head tilted like he's listening for something. Sam can't understand how he had ever not known that Dean can feel magic.

"Sam?" Dean asks, but there is no question on his face.

He's propped up against the headboard, wearing jeans but no shirt. There's an order of crab rangoon balanced on one thigh.

Sam crosses the room and picks it up and puts it on the table.

"Move to the middle," he says, and Dean scoots to the middle of the bed and down onto his back. His gaze flickers down to Sam's hand and then back to his face. He doesn't say anything. He just looks. Sam pulls the pillow out from under his head and tosses it onto the other bed. He holds out the knife, but Dean barely glances at it. He's watching Sam's face while keeping his own face still; Sam hasn't seen that expression in a while. It's Dean's 'I'll take a chance' face. Sam puts the knife on Dean's chest, balanced along the center line of his body. "Hold that," he says.

Then he carefully, thoroughly locks and closes and salts everything. He picks up the duffel that is their enormous first aid kit and carries it to the other bed, pulling out antiseptic and Neosporin and gauze and adhesive tape.

Dean keeps his still face all the way up until Sam picks up the knife and begins carefully disinfecting it.

"Sam," he says, low and taut. "Sammy."

Sam gives him a brief look, and then twirls the knife easily between his fingers. When he looks at Dean again, all that want is naked on his face, and he is completely fixated on the knife.

"Put your hands palms up," Sam says, and Dean flips his hands over at his sides. He doesn't move at all when Sam straddles his thighs, fitting his knees into the cups of each of Dean's palms. He is almost certain that Dean won't accidentally jerk, but he isn't content with almost certain.

Sam had given some thought to how it had gone when Dean had done it, and had come to the conclusion that this is not that. It's an act of love, and the end result will look the same, but he has no desire to infuse it with mysticism that Sam isn't capable of calling up. So he looks at what he's going to be cutting into, frames it with one hand and presses a kiss next to the vee of his thumb and index finger, as Dean had, but he doesn't try to make it anything it's not.

Sam looks at Dean's face, and Dean is looking straight up at the ceiling, though Sam doubts he's seeing it. His eyes are already glassy, he is already flushed and breathless. Even with that, he looks a little disbelieving.

Sam smiles faintly. "Ready?" he asks, but he doesn't wait for an answer.

He just cuts.

Dean whines deep in his chest and he breaks out in goosebumps over every inch of skin Sam can see, but he is almost lax with it, and when Sam glances up, Dean's eyes are closed.

It's a complicated symbol, all magic aside. It includes all the elements of the basic symbols of witchcraft, the cross, the pentagram, and the triple goddess, all combined and encircled by two more circles, between which protection runes are inscribed. It would take some time just to draw on paper. Cutting it into Dean's chest is far and away harder, not least because so many of the cuts cross other cuts, so it has to be done slowly, both to avoid marring the eventual shape of it, after it heals, and to keep from actually cutting away bits of skin.

Flesh is difficult. It has to be more than skin deep, but not deep enough to really be dangerous.

It takes a long time.

Dean comes about eight minutes in with a helpless, artless moan, and doesn't move at all while doing it. Sam takes a moment to wait for the denim over the ridge of Dean's cock to go dark and wet, just because he wants to see that, but otherwise he ignores it.

It's not about sex any more than it's about magic. Not for Sam.

This is just for Dean. Every bit of this is for Dean. This is how Sam can tell Dean that he is the only thing for Sam, that the two of them are all Sam wants, and Dean can accept it for what it really means because Sam didn't try to say it at all.

Sam isn't even hard. He's working too hard to bother with arousal, in spite of the way Dean is breathing and sweating and quietly, desperately overcome.

He can't really remember how long it had taken Dean to do this. It hadn't seemed like all that long at the time, but the whole length of the spell Dean had worked into Sam's body is weirdly fluid, and he remembers more what he had felt in his head than how long it had taken.

About twenty minutes in, Dean begins to writhe a tiny bit. It's clearly reactive, involuntary, but Sam doesn't want him moving at all, so he says, "Dean," firmly, and Dean tips his head up to look at Sam.

Tears are streaming from Dean's eyes, but otherwise he is just hot. He is panting and sweat is beading on his throat and his mouth is wet and he's been biting his bottom lip hard enough that there's a trickle of blood dripping down his chin. "Sam," he says, voice cracked. "Sammy, don't stop."

Sam straightens a little and says, "Look," and presses the tip of the knife to the clear outline of the head of Dean's cock through his jeans. Dean stops breathing. His eyes go so wide that two new tears slide down his cheeks, and his whole face is twisted into craving. Sam isn't surprised, but he's a little relieved. He'd been pretty sure this would work for Dean, but all liking of pain aside, this is Dean's cock they're not-talking about here. Sam wouldn't have blamed Dean if he'd just freaked out.

But no, Dean is staring like he can't think of anything he wants in the world more than he'd like Sam to cut him there, like a line of fire in a shallow scrape along his cock is something he has maybe dreamed about, and while Sam isn't sure he can bring himself to do that, ever, he can project the illusion of it.

He presses down hard enough that Dean can feel the sharp tip of the blade; there is going to be a small hole in these jeans tomorrow. Dean says, "Sammy, God, oh, please, Sam," and it's so strangled Sam can barely make it out, but it's definitely a yes. Sam drags the tip of the knife down the whole length of Dean, not hard enough to cut, but hard enough that Dean can feel it, hard enough that Sam can see the denim catching and tearing at irregular intervals.

Dean's head falls back and he yells and moans Sam's name at the same time, loudly enough that it echoes in the room, and comes again, still in his jeans, back bowing, hips snapping just a little.

Sam waits until Dean settles back onto the bed, limp and dazed, and goes back to work. It takes him another ten minutes to finish the bulk of it, and Dean is hard again by the time it's done, and is whimpering a little with what is probably sensory overload.

"Dean," Sam says, and Dean opens his eyes and looks in Sam's direction with unfocused eyes. "I want you to sit up. I want you to watch this part."

For a moment, Dean does nothing at all, and Sam isn't sure Dean can even parse language in the state he's in. Abruptly, Sam is rock solid in his own jeans, and he wants Dean so bad like this, wants to have him all sweaty and bloody and languorous. And Dean will almost certainly let him, even if Dean is so wrung out that he can't come again, will probably lie back and wallow in the pain and love every second of it.

Then Dean curls forward a little, and Sam moves off Dean's hands and helps him to sit up, knee-walks Dean slowly backward until he's braced against the headboard. He has to use his left hand on Dean's shoulder to hold him up.

"Are you with me, Dean?" Sam asks.

"Yeah," Dean says, slow and murmuring. He still sounds out of it, but a little less absent. He is staring down at the blood and cuts on his chest as though mesmerized.

Sam uses a gauze pad to blot at some of the blood, just so Dean can clearly see what Sam is doing. He looks up, and Dean is looking obediently down at his own chest. Sam puts the tip of the knife right in the center of the pentagram. Dean stops breathing. Sam quickly, deeply carves the impala into Dean's skin.

He puts the blade down on the bedspread. It's already covered in blood anyway.

Dean is staring at Sam. "I--" Dean says hoarsely.

Sam shakes his head. There is no telling what Dean will say right now, and maybe hate that he said it later.

"I want to fuck you. Now." _While you're still stunned and burning with it,_ Sam doesn't say.

Dean reaches down to fumble at his jeans, and Sam smiles a little at the idea that Dean might be able to negotiate his fly right now. The idea is ridiculous. Sam moves the knife to the table to avoid any unpleasant accidental stabbing, and just pulls Dean down flat again. Dean goes without protest, so deeply satiated that he's almost dead weight. Sam works Dean's jeans off carefully. The whole front of them is soaked through with come, and he has to peel them away from Dean's mostly hard cock.

Sam strips down as expediently as possible, grabs the lube, and shoves Dean's thighs apart a little roughly. Dean is weird about being manhandled. He's not a fan until after he's come, and then he seems to find it somehow comforting.

He hisses in a breath when Sam works a finger into him, but after two orgasms, Dean is pretty relaxed, and Sam works another in quickly, stretches Dean as fast as he can, because now that he isn't concentrating, Sam's balls are aching and his cock feels like it has it's own pulse. The cutting is never going to be a thing for Sam, but Dean's response to it is something else entirely. Dean so hot and stunned with pain that he is heavy-limbed and pliant is definitely a thing for Sam.

He leaves it with two, though he lubes his cock more liberally than usual, and Dean makes a grating sound when Sam works the head of his cock into Dean's ass, a hot sound regardless of whether it's pain or pleasure. Sam hooks his arms under Dean's knees and lifts his ass off the bed far enough to give Sam a good angle, and Dean bites out short breaths while Sam works his way in. It's almost easy, comparatively; Dean is as loose as he really gets, still drugged with pain, and he is still so tight that Sam is immediately groaning with it, so hot inside that Sam's cock is jerking and his balls are clenching, and he could come right this second if he wanted to. He doesn't, he clenches his teeth and pushes it back, bending all of his attention to the sounds Dean is making, low and throaty, as though they're being dragged from him.

"Is it different?" Sam asks in the quiet, undemanding tone that he's come to understand will overcome Dean's natural reticence enough here, only like this, and Sam is sure that whomever had taught Dean to be quiet had been utterly, utterly foolish. Reticent is Dean's natural state. Having Dean spill out his thoughts unfiltered like he will, like this, is more valuable than diamonds.

"It, yeah, like, like lightnin'," Dean slurs out, eyes half-lidded as Sam fucks him slow and hard. Dean likes fast and hard better, but the occasion seems to call for slow. "'s sharp, deeper, somethin', there's, Sam," he moans, but he doesn't stop talking. "'s deeper, 's'you," Dean whispers. "Like a hot shock," he groans. "Special occasion. Please."

Sam's hips jerk forward, and Dean whispers out a moan. Sam doubts Dean will come again, not so soon, but he knows that doesn't matter. He adjusts his knees and curls one hand around the top of the headboard for leverage, and fucks Dean as hard as he can. The pleasure is so deep and twisted that it's almost grueling, and Dean is jerking up at him a little and letting out a deep, continuous sound that is almost a wail.

On impulse, Sam puts his hand over the bloody carving on Dean's chest. He does it carefully, almost lightly, but Dean screams out and he does come again, barely a dribble of liquid, but hard enough that he clenches down and jerks around Sam's cock, and Sam will never get enough of the way it feels to have Dean coming with Sam's cock in him, all Sam's other things aside, Dean coming and screaming Sam's name will never stop doing it for him, and he bites his lip and shoves in as deep as he can go, and comes, hips jerking like he might somehow get deeper, listening to Dean's short, sharp little cries of pain and pleasure.

Dean is completely out of it, after, which Sam had more or less expected. He washes away the blood, makes sure there is no extraneous damage, and then dabs the whole thing carefully with Neosporin. Dean comes back enough to bat querulously at Sam's hands while he's trying to put on a bandage, but Sam wins by sheer dint of having more energy than Dean. Dean falls asleep while Sam cleans up his hole, checking for damage as he always does.

Sam has to half-carry Dean over to the other bed. Dean's is a blood-soaked ruin.

When he cleans himself up and climbs into the bed beside Dean, Dean merely turns his face into Sam's neck without waking.


End file.
